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: Even though we disagree on solutions to problems this title is still an instant classic!!
Summary: 5 Stars
Politically me and Senator Obama are pretty closely aligned for the exception of Sen. Obama being a litle warmer to the idea of government sponsored solutions to our nation's most pressing problems. In this book you see that way of thinking exposed at key moments. Take for instance when he is helping some folks with housing, in which he fails to call out that government sponsored housing has been one of the most socially disastrous actions ever undertaken. His stories are still profoundly moving and show how they shape the man that we see today. It is a must read if you are planning on voting! It quickly and strongly explains some of the nonsense that conservatives will cling on to in order to undermine him. Book Review: Where Charity Begins (A Non-Political Review)
Summary: 3 Stars
As the most progressive of our generation evolve toward a global race, Obama's search for his place in the world is a journey that many who sometimes feel caught between worlds can relate to. With the influence of multiple nationalities, lifestyles and mentalities, Barack explores social norms and mores across continents and cultures.
Working hard to make changes within a tight system of non-action in Chicago, the first few chapters of the book conjured a whole new world for me. To read about the condition of particular neighborhoods, the lack of infrastructure there and the slow demise of neglected communities was very interesting. However, it's the last few chapters of the book in particular that resonated with me - as Barack travels to Kenya for the first time in search of his father.
In those last chapters we circle back to an idea that I like; We don't know where we are going unless we know where we come from. By tracing through the family tree, as close as possible to his origins, Baracks unveils the history he needs to propel him in to the future.
The revelation of his father's identity through the landscape and an array of good and bad narratives doesn't answer all his questions but it definitely intertwines him into the fabric of his past and with a present day community that is a part of his heritage. Trekking through the shanty towns in the outskirts of Nairobi, exposing himself to the harsh realities of lineage and strangely accepted customs, he tunes in to his surroundings and, as the story unfolds, there is a noticeable difference between the first few chapters of dissaray and the last ones of belonging. Some of that longing is satisfied.
Obama strives to complete that core circle of self-discovery, of race and inheritance, before he can move on to the outer rings of law and politics. In a world where families are rarely perfect, poverty pervades and we sometimes learn who we want to be by avoiding repeating other's mistakes, Obama makes himself kindly vulnerable in sharing the truths of his foundation and the source of his strength.
In his new endeavours, whether he wants to carry the baton righteously forward or make amends for a path gone wrong, Barack Obama definitely carries the torch of a new era.
Sure, read it.
[Expecting some contraversy over this one]
Book Review: Man of Values
Summary: 5 Stars
Barack Obama's autobiography or "coming of age" memoir of his childhood and young adulthood is a wonderful read--engrossing, inspiring--it reads like a novel in its intensity. The influences on the maturing of this young black/white man seem to make him a man of the future: one of multi-ethnicity, multicultures, at home all over the world with all nationalities of people as well as people in every economic and social group, knowing Christian and non-Christian religions, fluent in several languages and from all this, developing a gift for communication, inspiration and leadership. His strong values of honesty and compassion derive from direct experience while young and role modeling of strong elders. This is a book that people can enjoy, regardless of political affiliations and Obama comes across as a man people can't help but admire for strength, commitment, perception and the one characteristic of all humans--"hope."Book Review: A Good Quick Read...
Summary: 5 Stars
...which I read before anyone began to take Obama's chances of being nominated for president seriously. Still, it had the tenor of a campaign biography -- careful, modest, strategic, and yes, evasive at times. The most any campaign biography ever provides is a sense of the subject's priorities; in other words, you won't find many clues to Obama's specific positions on world issues in the account of his childhood. You will, however, get a feeling of the man, and you will discover an American who has far wider experience of other cultures, and far greater optimism about a multi-cultural society, than any other politician on the scene. Those who proclaim that Obama lacks "experience" in foreign policy are dead wrong; one strong foundation for foreign policy is a knowledge of the rest of the world based on first-hand experience.
I'm reviewing this book today because I found a story in the morning newspaper, telling how young Obama supporters on the internet are adding his middle name, Hussein, to their tags and even to the real names. Hey, I'm a young supporter at heart! Henceforth, call me Giordano Hussein Bruno!
Book Review: Thanks for this incitation to dream
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is not a memoir or even Memoirs. It is a novel, a non-fictional true novel because life is a novel and even at times poetry, and Barack Obama is an absolutely perfect writer who captures the living texture of this life with gusto, taste and style. The book of course is a chase and search for the author's father by the author himself as far as far can be, including in the green hills of Africa. But it is also a lot more. It is the discovery of family roots growing in two different soils, continents or even universes. But Barack Obama is not psychotic nor schizophrenic, so he tells us the story of how he brought unity to himself without in any way negating the dual carriage way of his personality. He shows and even demonstrates how one cannot be anything in life if one does not build that personal unity from the patchwork of their lives. Some of his brothers, or sisters, or parents succeed with various methods. Some others fail or at least linger in unsuccessful attempts. Now, that is only the first element of the book that makes it an autobiography of sort. It is though and yet a lot more and I am going to give only a few examples. I like his "Home Squared" or even Home Power Three or Home Tripled, or whatever. I will insist on the power element because this approach of home gives power to the subject. This power comes from the ability of the subject to join the immediate home environment in which he or she lives to the original family home from which he or she comes, that is to say the parents' home that is in Obama's case double since he knew his father at first as coming from Kenya seen as his home and he discovers that he came from what this father called his Home Squared, that is to say the home base of his father's father. Obama's conception of a human being seems to be such a piled up pyramid made of many tiers, strata, layers, one on top of the other in the present, one deeper than the other into the past, and what about the future that gets its inspiration from this heap of potentials and possible realizations of one's dreams. This leads to a remark on authenticity that cannot be attached to one personal parameter connected to the outside world, including African-ness. Authenticity is attached to the contradictory unified patchwork that makes us what we are inside. I think Obama could easily reach beyond and add "at any discrete moment of one's life", no two moments even in close temporal succession being ever the same. We are ever changing and yet always the same, because we are what we see or even dream ourselves. The last point I will make is about his dynamic vision of the law. He knows the law can be seen as reflecting narrow-minded interests and greed. But he also knows that the law is a human creation that comes from the conversation between and among various individuals and circumstances reflecting the complex conflictive context of humanity at any moment in its history, a conversation that is aiming at creating balance and equilibrium even if in many cases it is biased and severely one-sided. But his phrase "a nation arguing with its conscience" is beautiful and worth sitting in any sacred corpus of canonical texts, including Goethe's Faust Second Part. It is, and should always be, a canon of American culture because we hold such truths to be self evident.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines