Dreams From My Father Barack Obama

Dreams From My Father Barack Obama

Overview:

This is the book to read if you want to understand Obama's personal background and how it forms his character. It was written while he was still only an obscure State Senator -- written in his spare time, without a ghost writer, while struggling to make ends meet on a state senator's salary. Therefore it is an honest portrait, made before Obama even intended to run for US Senate, much less for President.

Obama is an internationalist. That means, not only does he believe in globalization as an economic and military policy, but he is accustomed to presenting himself abroad as an American -- which most Americans are not. America is an isolated country -- unless we go out of our way to travel abroad and experience it intimately, we don't participate in the rest of the world. The consequence of that isolation is that we don't deeply understand foreigners' points of view. Internationalist Americans DO understand foreigners -- and foreigners are well-aware of distinguishing internationalist Americans from our more isolated brethren. Obama's massive crowd of supporters in Germany was an acknowledgement from the Germans that they recognize Obama as an internationalist. The press enthrallment with Obama on his foreign trip was because the press saw that other foreigners recognized that too, and assumed it would translate to popularity at home.

But most Americans are not internationalists. The press got it wrong because they only reported on what foreigners felt -- while foreigners don't vote in the US presidential election. Obama thought he would be seen on this trip as Presidential -- but in fact his popularity abroad was seen as just another way in which Obama differs from most Americans, because most Americans are not internationalist. Hence Obama's trip abroad was seen as elitist by most American voters -- not as evidence of foreign policy expertise, even though it was seen that way abroad.

In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father, a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man, has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey; first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother's family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father's life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance.

A wonderful book.

ENJOYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!

Sincerelyours

And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!