"Obama smiles modestly at the nine strangers and, wholly unaccustomed at this stage of his 34-year-old life to adoring crowds, says, 'Why don’t we sit in a little circle?'," Robert Draper writes in the November issue of GQ.

Then Barack Obama was little more than an unknown author visiting EsoWon bookstore in it's old Hyde Park location before they moved to Leimert Park Village. The magazines proclaims EsoWon "the leading African-American book vendor in Los Angeles."

His shirtsleeves rolled up and no tie, Obama read from his memoir, "Dreams from My Father." But only a few paragraphs before offering to taking questions.

Draper expounds: "His talent with words is widely acknowledged, but that skill is often regarded as more instrumental than essential ... what if the knack is more like a calling? At least from early adulthood if not before, Barack Obama was clearly driven to write; to trace that continuing compulsion, from the days when he penned fiction and then memoir to his present speechcraft, is to recognize that writing is anything but a small part of Obama’s life. It’s basic to who he is."

It was little more than a year ago that Eso Won announced they were going under. But the community rallied and things changed.


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“Obama’s inauguration makes me more determined to stay in business,” Eso Won owner James Fugate told Wendy Werris of Publishers Weekly in January. “This administration brings with it new ideas that I believe will take us and the whole country in a new economic direction. We are overjoyed today.”

Fugate, who hosted President Bill Clinton during his book signing tour in 2004, said: “Maybe I haven’t been the best businessman in the past, but now I want to do everything I can to make the store run better. ... We’ll also hold more community events here in addition to our regular author appearances.”