Jon Jeter is on a roll. Earlier this week I posted a link to a starred Publisher’s Weekly review he received for his forthcoming book Flat Broke in the Free Market and today I’m happy to announce that John Wiley & Sons has signed Jon’s next book, which he’ll be co-authoring with his good friend Robert Pierre from the Washington Post.

With so many books coming out about Barack Obama, Jon and Robert came up with the terrific idea of writing a book not about Obama himself, but about what Obama means to Black Americans. With Obama’s presidency we’re clearly in the midst of a watershed moment in our nation’s history. Jeter and Pierre contend that for blacks this is 1948, with Jackie Robinson coming to the plate for the first time for the Brooklyn Dodgers; it’s 1954, with the Supreme Court voting to desegregate public schools; and it’s 1994 with blacks in South Africa going to the polls for the first time to elect Nelson Mandela as that country’s first democratically-elected president. And it’s all those moments at once.

The book will explore what Obama’s presidency means to a group of ordinary black people. That is, what does the fact that a black man is President of the United States really mean to black people? What does that mean to a poor black woman who lives in a NYC housing project? How does she talk to her son differently? What about an elderly woman near the end of her life who grew up in the Deep South and remembers vividly when blacks were lynched just for trying to vote, let alone run for office?

What about a retired Memphis garbage worker who was on that fateful final march with Dr. King? Even though he was the leader of the Civil Rights movement, few could have even conceived at that time that he could become a serious candidate for President. How does Obama’s presidency affect how black people talk to their children? How does it affect what can be expected of them, what can be dreamt, and how black people think about themselves?

Jeter and Pierre have selected 13 African Americans from a wide variety of life experiences and through their stories the book will uncover what Obama’s presidency truly means to Black Americans. It will be published in time for Obama’s first state of the union speech in early 2010 and having already read a couple of the sample chapters I can’t wait to see the rest, as it should make for an incredible book.