From five floors above, our home seemed to be watching us. I imagined the rooms slipping into a Havisham-esque decay as we failed them, the idea of us that I cherished receding.

The opening paragraph is a real hummer: “ Every day thousands of military aviators go into the sky believing in an unspoken promise: that the military is doing all it can to keep them safe.

For others of us, though, Obama’s wit is closely linked to the outsiderness that got him elected.

The whites of his eyes are very white in the dark, and the black of his Brylcreemed hair very black.