In June, the memoir of veteran publisher and editor Peter Osnos, An Especially Good View: Watching History Happen, was released with minimal fanfare. Although he sanitizes his 
experience as the publisher of Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father, Osnos lets slip a detail that could transform Obama’s reputation from “the best writer to occupy the White House since Lincoln” to the best plagiarist to occupy the White House before Biden.
First, the sanitation. In a 2006 article, Osnos publicly scolded then-Sen. Obama for his “ruthlessness.” As Osnos recounted, hustling young agent Jane Dystel stuck by an unknown Obama even after he failed to honor a book contract with Simon & Schuster. Undaunted, Dystel landed Obama a new contract with Osnos, then the publisher of Times Books. The punch line of the 2006 article is that, after Dreams took off in 2004, Obama repaid Dystel by dumping her for a D.C. power attorney. Obama’s “questionable judgment about using public service as a personal payday” dismayed the openly liberal Osnos.
That was 2006. In his 2021 memoir, Osnos includes the details of the original book deal with Dystel, but he purges all traces of Obama’s venality. Off-handedly, however, he adds a potentially damning detail. In 1994 — note the date — Obama met with Osnos and Times Books editor Henry Ferris to set terms. Writes Osnos, “He was determined, he said, to finish the book, which would involve a trip to Kenya for research about his father, who had died there in a car accident.”
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