Talk about becoming a hit. Michelle Obama’s new memoir, Becoming, now holds Barnes & Noble’s record for best first-week sales ever. Becoming has outsold 2018 bestsellers including journalist Bob Woodward’s Fear and former FBI director James Comey’s A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership, according to the bookseller.
Becoming is also the fastest-selling adult book over the past three years, and it’s on track to be one of the fastest sellers in the history of Barnes & Noble, the 145-year-old chain that is the world’s largest retail bookseller.
“This is definitely the must-have book of the holiday season,” said Liz Harwell, Barnes & Noble’s senior director of merchandising for trade books.
The much-discussed memoir details the former first lady’s early years growing up on Chicago’s South Side, her professional career as a lawyer, and her eight years in the White House as first lady. In addition to sharing details about her struggles with miscarriage and in vitro fertilization (IVF), Obama also discloses that she and the former president attended marriage counseling.
She also didn’t spare her husband’s successor, President Donald Trump, who she called a “misogynist” and who she says questioned former president Barack Obama’s birth certificate and citizenship in order to “stir up the wingnuts and kooks.”