Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

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Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

Author(s):

Barack Obama

Label: Crown
Publisher(s):

Crown

Studio: Crown
Manufacturer: Crown
Binding: Hardcover
List Price: $25.95
Our Price: $17.13
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Nine years before the Senate campaign that made him one of the most influential and compelling voices in American politics, Barack Obama published this lyrical, unsentimental, and powerfully affecting memoir, which became a #1 New York Times bestseller when it was reissued in 2004. Dreams from My Father tells the story of Obama?s struggle to understand the forces that shaped him as the son of a black African father and white American mother?a struggle that takes him from the American heartland to the ancestral home of his great-aunt in the tiny African village of Alego.

Obama opens his story in New York, where he hears that his father?a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man?has died in a car accident. The news triggers a chain of memories as Barack retraces his family?s unusual history: the migration of his mother?s family from small-town Kansas to the Hawaiian islands; the love that develops between his mother and a promising young Kenyan student, a love nurtured by youthful innocence and the integrationist spirit of the early sixties; his father?s departure from Hawaii when Barack was two, as the realities of race and power reassert themselves; and Barack?s own awakening to the fears and doubts that exist not just between the larger black and white worlds but within himself.

Propelled by a desire to understand both the forces that shaped him and his father?s legacy, Barack moves to Chicago to work as a community organizer. There, against the backdrop of tumultuous political and racial conflict, he works to turn back the mounting despair of the inner city. His story becomes one with those of the people he works with as he learns about the value of community, the necessity of healing old wounds, and the possibility of faith in the midst of adversity.

Barack?s journey comes full circle in Kenya, where he finally meets the African side of his family and confronts the bitter truth of his father?s life. Traveling through a country racked by brutal poverty and tribal conflict, but whose people are sustained by a spirit of endurance and hope, Barack discovers that he is inescapably bound to brothers and sisters living an ocean away?and that by embracing their common struggles he can finally reconcile his divided inheritance.

A searching meditation on the meaning of identity in America, Dreams from My Father might be the most revealing portrait we have of a major American leader?a man who is playing, and will play, an increasingly prominent role in healing a fractious and fragmented nation.

Customer Reviews

Dreams from my Father

Surprisingly well written personal history...not always a page-turner, but Obama
gives real and honest insight about the very specific emotions of growing up
the way he did. As such, it really reveals the kind of man he is...and the point
view he's likely to bring to the presidency. An interesting, touching and
very instructive read.

Barack Obama

This book is great.It gives insite into the life of Barack Obama. I bet no other president has EVER been so read about, or sold so many books, tapes and buttons. Barack Obama(Mr President) is a great man! His background contributes to his greatness.

WORTH THE READ!

I finally finished Dreams From My Father last night. And while I confess I rarely leave reviews. I realized this morning how important these reviews are at helping me make decisions to buy a book or not... With that being said, I must whole-heartedly recommend this book. If you are at all interested in the nature and character of our 44th President - it is a must read!

I AM AN OBAMA FAN! I fully acknowledge that, but I think this book will even help the skeptics among us. By all indications we have done well America. We have elected a man, not a god certainly, but someone who is willing to be transparent, with real substance and a passion for people based on a very diverse background. All the way through the book that's what I kept thinking. He was the right choice for president.

Chicago seemed a real microcosm of the problems the President is now facing in the US. Somehow you gain a since that it was his practice run. The other thing I like about the book is that it takes a lot of the media sound bites we've heard over the past couple of years and puts them in perspective of the life of a real person, struggling to come to terms with identity and self - as we all are - if we are honest about it.

The surprising thing for me was that President Obama is also a gifted writer at that. I could hardly put the book down. I am no literary giant but I found it engaging, well paced and easy to read. My only regret is that I did not buy a hardcover copy. Because for me it's definitely a keeper, a book I want to add to my permanent library. So if I had to sum it up I would use words like: inspiring, informative, honest, a journey -that even caused me to do a little soul searching myself...

A tale of hope

I decided to read this book to find more about the man the world has enthusiatically endorsed as its new leader. That may seem funny to US citizens but in a survey in Australia over 70 percent of people said they supported Senator Obama . With all its power and influence the US calls the shots certainly it does in Australia . When reading the book I thought at time Obama was concentrating on the US Black / White issue as he said he might in the introduction. But thinking more I believe the book is more about the human condition. It is great that he has had such experience in some many environments hawaii, Indonesia, Kenya, New York , Chicago to bring to the presidency. I felt empathy to all the people he described so well even thought I have not had his experience as a white middle class australian.
He writes as weel as his speeches and I truly hope HE CAN bring new hope to a trouble world.

an astute and deeply personal account of growing up

A very candid and revealing look at the background and genesis of our new president. The pain (and painful honesty) of Barack Obama's life growing up in Indonesia and Hawaii are offset by his personal and astute observations of the racial terrain in America. As someone in both black and white worlds, he has a rare viewpoint of the ways of these two conflicting cultures.

This is an engaging memoir of confronting the past in the process of self-discovery, of growing up "fatherless" in a single parent world. Obama's struggle and coming to terms with his absent father and his candor of this as he travels to Kenya to find answers - this has been written up in compelling and eloquent language. Although this book was penned 14 years ago, it remains indispensable for the fundamental understanding of this man who is to now to lead this country.

I agree with the reviewer from Ankeny, Iowa about how the reader needs to be listening to the core messages in this text, regardless of political orientation. This is about a man who has overcome much in his pursuit of an absent father and the quest to reconcile with that absence. As such, it is about a courageous journey of self-discovery, one that inspires and encourages.

This text is Barack Obama defining himself in his earlier years; for his years in the political arena, THE AUDACITY OF HOPE is an engaging read that picks up the thread of his fascinating life. There are excerpts from this book at the end of the 2004 revised edition of DREAMS FROM MY FATHER. Highly recommended.

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