"Changing Times," by Glen Jeansonne and David Luhrssen

A new book on U.S. President Barack Obama, co-written by a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee (UWM) and one of his former students, has just been published and is commercially available.

Glen Jeansonne interrupted work on a scholarly book he is writing about the 33rd U.S. President Herbert Hoover to produce a popular book about the life of Obama that ends with the president’s inauguration earlier this year.

“Changing Times: The Life of Barack Obama,” authored with writer and UWM alumnus David Luhrssen, is available from Maven Mark Books of Oconomowoc (www.mavenmarkbooks.com) and also at Amazon.com and other booksellers. It has been translated into, and will soon be available in, five other languages.

Jeansonne decided to take on the Obama book after Super Tuesday during the presidential campaign, “when it looked as though Obama would win.”

He is happy he did.

Jeansonne, who began his book on Hoover before the events of last fall, still has three years to finish that book for Palgrave Macmillan Publishers. But he is already becoming a sought-after commentator on the Quaker president who served during the Great Depression. In November 2008, he was quoted in a story that appeared in The Wall Street Journal, calling Hoover “the most misunderstood and the most underappreciated president.”

“This has been an unusual opportunity to be writing these two particular biographies at the same time,” he says.

It has given him an interesting historical perspective on the present, since Obama came to office just after the worst economic recession since the Depression hit. As he and Luhrssen were finishing “Changing Times,” it was not clear how history would judge the new president’s administration. Obama had inherited crises on multiple fronts.

“This is exactly what happened to Hoover,” says Jeansonne. “He had never failed at anything he had done before. But he faced dire circumstances that were just more than one person could be expected to overcome.”

This perspective is the value of historical research and passing on knowledge to both scholars and the general public, he says. Jeansonne’s research has already inspired two graduate theses about the Hoover administration. And the two authors hope to make appearances in area schools to talk about this topic.

“Changing Times” is a synthesis of Obama’s upbringing and his earlier political career. “It’s not about policy,” says Jeansonne. “It’s about what Obama brings to the table in his administration – what makes him the kind of person he is.”

As Jeansonne points out, it’s still too early to tell what kind of president he will be, but “presidencies are driven by events,” he says. “If you had judged Hoover at the same time in his presidency as where Obama currently is, you would have said he was successful.”

On the UWM faculty for 31 years, Jeansonne specializes in 20th-century American history. He has 14 books in print or in press. His book on Gerald L.K. Smith, a Wisconsin-born member of Louisiana Governor Huey Long’s entourage and an anti-Semitic preacher, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. He has won the UWM Career Research Award (1990), the Alumni Association Teaching Excellence Award (1992) and a UWM Undergraduate Teaching Award (2006).

David Luhrssen received his undergraduate and graduate degrees in history at UWM. He has taught at UWM, the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and Milwaukee Area Technical College, and is co-author with Glen Jeansonne of “A Time of Paradox: America Since 1890.” Luhrssen is also arts and entertainment editor at Milwaukee’s weekly newspaper, the Shepherd Express. He has written about music and culture for publications such as Billboard and Entertainment Weekly, and about history for journals like History Today and Wisconsin Academy Review.