Eli Saslow has been a staff writer at The Washington Post since 2004. He covered the 2008 presidential campaign, wrote profile stories about Barack Obama and then chronicled the president's life inside the White House. Saslow has won multiple awards for news and feature writing. He lives in Washington with his wife and daughter.

Chapter 1  “I lost my job, my health benefits and my self worth in a matter of 5 days.” The nightly briefing book arrived at the White House residence just before 8:00 p.m., hand--delivered to President Obama by a junior member of his staff. It was a large, three--ring binder that had been covered in black leather and stamped with the presidential seal, and Obama sometimes eyed it wearily and lamented the arrival of what he called his “homework packet.” Each night brought another few hundred pages of policy memos and scheduling notes, another deluge of intelligence about two wars, terrorist plots, and the tumbling U.S. economy. Some documents Obama only skimmed. Others he set aside to read the next morning. He opened the binder and reached for a thin purple folder--the one item that he always read, and usually read first. The contents inside the purple folder had become a fixture of his presidency, shaping his speeches and informing his policies. Senior advisers had referred to it by turns as Obama’s “lifeline,” “inspiration,” “connection to reality,” and “guide to what people really care about.” On this evening, the folder had been labeled with the date: “January 8, 2010.” It was a snowy Friday night, the end of another long day at the end of another long week inside the White House. Obama and his family had recently returned from a ten-day trip to Hawaii, but he joked to friends that he already craved another vacation. In Washington, Obama had come back to a Republican resurgence that threatened the passage of his health-care bill; to the attempted terrorist bombing of a passenger flight over Michigan; to the latest American death in Afghanistan, from an explosion on January 3; to the mounting resistance of Tea Party protesters, some of whom marched across the street from his house and waved Obama-Hitler signs; to an approval rating of 50 percent and dropping, the lowest for a second-year president in more than half a century; to the increasingly feeble defense of his own press secretary, Robert Gibbs, who, on this day, had stood in front of eighty reporters during a regular briefing and said of his boss’s current outlook: “I would say the president is worried about today and worried about the future.” Hours earlier, Obama had made a short statement of his own. It had once again fallen on him to deliver bad news, so he had entered the East Room of the White House at 2:45 p.m., displaying what had become some of his most familiar gestures--the body language of disappointment. He narrowed his eyes, pursed his lips, and offered a solemn nod once he reached the lectern. Another eighty-five thousand people had lost their jobs during the last month, he said. More than four million had lost jobs in the last year. Almost one million had given up on looking for work entirely. “Today’s numbers,” Obama said, frowning and squinting into the camera lights, “are a reminder that the road to recovery is never straight.” There were other reminders: the new gray hair spreading across the sides of Obama’s head, the heavy creases running across his cheeks, and the dark circles deepening below his eyes. The president still looked remarkably fit for forty-eight years old, but some medical experts believed the last twelve months had aged Obama by two or three years. His cholesterol was climbing, and he continued to rely on the occasional cigarette to calm his nerves. Like all presidents, he described his responsibilities as never-ending, and his aides conceded that they had underestimated the range of issues Obama would face during his first term. He had flown 152 times on Air Force One in the last year, visiting 30 states and 21 countries. He had given 160 news interviews, delivered 412 speeches, and spoken at 5 funerals. He had committed to a war in Afghanistan and received the Nobel Peace Prize. On an average day, he squeezed in a morning workout after his daughters left for school, rushed to a national security meeting at 8:30 a.m., and continued working virtually uninterrupted until nearly midnight. He usually spent the last two hours of his workday on a couch at home, where he fought off sleep and read the briefing book. Now he opened the purple folder and glanced at the cover sheet. “Memorandum to the president,” it read. “Per your request, we have attached 10 pieces of unvetted correspondence addressed Read Less