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 : Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.04960730092
EAN: 9780307383419
ISBN: 0307383415
Label: Crown
Manufacturer: Crown
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 464
Publication Date: January 09, 2007
Publisher: Crown
Release Date: January 09, 2007
Studio: Crown
Sales Rank: 202




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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
Average Rating:  out of 5 stars

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Everyone should read this book
During the 2004 Democratic Convention Barack Obama burst onto the US national political scene with a speech that included this line: "I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible." Reading "Dreams from My Father" gives readers an important glimpse of part of that story.

This autobiography was originally published in 1995, shortly after Obama ... Read More



Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Masterfully written biography
Written in an intellilgent, clear style, Barak Obama lays out his life in a thoughful way. A most winsome and hopeful biography. Our future will be in the hands of a person who has dealt with adversity with verve, deep contemplation and patience.

He speaks and America listens with hope for the future as his dream unfolds.



Rating: 2 out of 5 stars - Obama is a Liar
This book is a "spin" piece released well in advance of Obama's political career to lay the groundwork: the BS myth was already well in place when he decided to run.

Now we know the TRUTH: That he was born in Kenya, not Hawaii (two cases are now before the United States Supreme Court to decide his eligibility since he is not a natural-born citizen); he did not go to Harvard law school on "student loans" as he stated but rather his education was financed by a Saudi billionaire; geneaologists ... Read More



Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Great book!
This book is an excellent read and it allows the reader to gain a deeper understanding of President-Elect, Barack Obama. After reading this book, I gained a deeper understanding of him as a youth, a young man, a son and grandson. I also gained a greater understanding of his values, his beliefs and his purpose. It is a great book.



Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - A True American Story
This was a very enjoyable read. I could not put it down. Not often are top political figures this transparent and offer such a naked glimpse into their personal thoughts and experiences.



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