Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
Book Review: Destined to be a Classic
Summary: 5 Stars
Very few personal narratives develop a theme with such skill. As Barack Obama describes them, we come to understand his parents & grandparents better than they might have ever understood themselves.
When most kids might be shell shocked from a move to Indonesia, he watches and learns. All around Hawaii he sees the clues to who he is in part. He spots the racial dynamics of Punahoe and the simple goodness of his grandparents. A brief visit from his father creates only stress. When he sees "Black Orpheus" and his mother's enthusiasm for it, he puts it together and with poetry tells how he feels he, and many others, come into this world.
If anyone wonders how "organizers" spend their days, the Chicago part of the saga describes the work, the volunteers, typical meetings, the organizer culture, etc. He cuts right through the myths and shows on how the sociology of color creates neighborhoods/living situations that create hard choices for the people caught up in them. He zeros in on how the brutal past created a psychology that stuns and immobilizes.
The "dreams/father" theme recurs throughout. He gives the reader glimpses as he gets them, so the reader becomes as curious as Obama. In Kenya he sees and learns things he could never have envisioned from the US. The narrative of the Kenyan grandmother is stunning, as are the words on his grandfather's work ID card. After all the revelations, his summary of what he had seen is again terse and on target: the important history had been discarded, and the wrong history, dysfunctional in the "new" Kenya, perpetuated.
This book is amazing on many levels. I envision it will wend its way to reading lists and pieces of it will be discussed in political science, sociology and psychology as well as literature classes.
Book Review: Great reading and informative
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a good insight into Mr. Obama who is a candidate for the presidency. This is an inside view of him in his words. I enjoyed reading the autobiography. He is candid and forthcoming about what has shaped him as a person. I recommend the book to anyone who would like to get to know the candidate.Book Review: More style than substance
Summary: 3 Stars
I was impressed by Barack's incredible personal history and early life expereinces. He is also a strong narrator for the audio tapes. In the end, however, I felt like I was missing any key takeaways or lessons beyond understanding what impact his upbringing might have on the way he views the world. Book Review: Not what I expected - in a good way
Summary: 5 Stars
I picked this book up because I try to read the books written by presidential candidates, and because I was curious as to what all the hype about Obama was about. I expected a typical "presidential candidate" book, written in clear but uninspired prose and carrying a pandering message wiped of anything that anyone might possibly find objectionable. To my pleasant surprise, this book was neither. This is probably in part because it was written a decade ago, before his political career - but mostly, I believe, it is because of the type of person Obama appears to be.
One surprise is that the book is extremely well-written (and it wasn't ghost-written, either). There are parts where you can tell that it's his first book -- an overwrought phrase here or there, a bit of meandering -- but overall, the writing quality is astounding -- better than the writing of many professional authors. Obama is clear without being boring and has the ability to capture a situation or a feeling with a rare degree of simplicity and evocativeness.
The main reason I like the book is that it is honest -- it serves honesty in great heaping bucketfuls, in fact. Obama does not try to make himself look good in this book (which, ironically, makes him look even better). It is about his journey as a biracial American, and as a result is chock-full of his mistakes and missteps as much as his gains. The people in the book are treated with compassion and empathy, and every experience is framed and weighed by an incisive intellect that never loses its sympathy for the people involved. I am most struck by the obvious intelligence and intellectual independence of the narrator: he really THINKS about things, and has the courage to draw his own conclusions. That is a tremendously unusual thing to find in a person -- an even more unusual thing in a politician.
I'm aware that this review may look like it was written by an Obama shill, but I couldn't find much to dislike. [Though I would have liked to see more about his mother and her role in his life.] Truth be told, I'm still not sure who I'll vote for for President -- I'm not going to decide this early -- though I'm leaning Obama, in no small part due to this book. But regardless of what sort of president he would make, I have to think that anyone who could write this book must be a pretty amazing person.
Book Review: The Personal Side of Barack Obama
Summary: 4 Stars
When I purchased "Dreams from My Father" I was looking for more political firepower from the US Senator. At the time of my purchase I did not realize it was written over ten years ago.
While the book fails to provide what I was looking for in making a selection in regard to the presidential elections, it did give excellent background to this accomplished man. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) tells his story with such eloquence and passion, and provided excellent reading material.
"The Audacity of Hope" helps to solidify the Senator's political positions, but his storytelling technique makes "Dreams from My Father" the better of his two books and one of my personal favorites.