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Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance | 
 enlarge | Author: Barack Obama
Publisher: Crown
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $15.93
You Save: $10.02 (39%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  274 reviews
Sales Rank: 121
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 464
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.5
ISBN: 0307383415
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.04960730092
EAN: 9780307383419
ASIN: 0307383415
Publication Date: January 9, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 269 more reviews...
 It's even better than 5 stars August 28, 2008
I wish that every American could read this book! I was moved and impressed as I learned about who Barack Obama is. This book was written shortly after graduating from law school and before Obama entered politics. It highlights what an intelligent, perceptive, philosophical and principled person he is.
This is so much more than a simple bio. Obama's relections about the events of his life are poignant and insightful. I learned so much about the man as he recounted his real education (the one he got on the south side of Chicago) after Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard Law.
Obama's capacity to weave something handsome and strong from the disparate threads of his inheritance gives me hope that through his vision and leadership he can help our country appreciate and make good use of our diversity.
 A racist book August 27, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Obviously, I only bought and read the book, because Mr. Obama is in the race to become the next President.
The book is easy reading, the story he tells is interesting enough so you will not put the book away because you are bored. The father he searches for was a gifted man, who wasted his gifts, became an alcoholic and an abuse, yet is Mr. Obama's eyes, he had one redeeming quality - he was BLACK!
The book is full of racism! Not the "Red neck" kind of dumb racism, but a more sophisticated one - YET STILL RACISM!
After having read this book, it is easy to understand, why Mr. Obama had such a difficult time to separate himself from Reverend Wright - he simply believes the same racist agenda, Mr. Wright does!
Being a German national, the question of who to vote for does not arise, but I certainly feel, those Americans who contemplate voting for Mr. Obama should read this book.
 Interesting insight to an inspiring man August 26, 2008
Though I am not an American citizen and therefore I do not get a vote in the Nov election, I still find Obama an inspiring and interesting person.
As for the book, it's interesting but not that engaging. It should be noted that the book was written over ten years ago and is not about his recent public political success and more about a young black boy growing up in Hawaii and Indonesia being raised by a white mother and her white grandparents.
I found the real star of the book is Barack's mother. What an amazing woman. She put everything into raising him. At the beginning of the book, Barack writes, had he known his mother would not survive her cancer illness, he may have instead written a book about her (as a great parent) and not about the absent one.
The book is about growing up, making decisions and reconciliation - going back to Africa to meet his brothers, sisters and grandparents.
Growing up in Hawaii is the first part of the book. Going to university in California and New York is the second part of the book and the final part is Barack going home to meet his relatives. I find the latter half was better than the first half.
Reading the book, I found it astounding the level of detail he goes into describing each scene and what everyone said. I later learned that names of characters have been changed to protect their privacy and the story is an approximation of what happened. Barack is quite the storyteller.
I thought the book could have been edited a bit as it was long.
Interesting read as I didn't realize how strong he feels attached to his black roots. There is so much separation in every scene who is black who is white. I was surprised by that. Very strong lines drawn between blacks and whites in his opinions.
Overall, if you want to know about the man before age 25, and how he formed his views and values, I think you may find this book to be an interesting insight. It's not a page-turner but it does provide insight into the man and his thought processes.
Coming to Terms With Heritage and Race August 25, 2008
The young Barack Obama, going to a school in Hawaii, flips through a library book in search of information about the Luo tribe of Africa from which his Grandfather and Father are descendants. His mind has entertained thoughts of his ancestor tribe as glorious kings, adorned in colorful traditional clothes. The book he is reading tells him that the Luo were a kind of nomadic farmers who wore a loincloth. He leaves the book open and walks out of the library.
This incident is one of many that nicely illustrate the power and ultimate disillusionment of generational myths and how we have to reconcile truths with our affections. The author conveys a restless, impatient nature and a palpable unease with his heritage and his place in American society.
This is not a book about a presidential candidate, it was written well before the author was seriously considering even his national Senate run.
Actually, Dreams of My Father more closely hews to the conventions of 1st generation fiction, than it does to autobiography or memoir. The author has a nice way with language, though at times he crosses to cliche and seems too enamored with the literary scenes he has constructed. In the introduction to my paperback edition, Obama admits that on the republication of the book, he was tempted to edit it down a bit.
The book is split into three main sections. First he lays out his "Origins," by talking about his parents and his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia. He segues into his time of becoming a young man of color in the United States.
In the second part, he tells of his days as an activist/organizer in Chicago. Working in one of the worst neighborhoods, Obama tries to accomplish little victories by gaining enough grass roots support from neighborhood residents for things like employment centers and increased policing.
In the final act, he visits Kenya to meet his African family and learn more about his Father and his Grandfather, and he finds, not to his or our surpise, that the stories are complicated and not always flattering. Polygamy, violence, debt, political uprisings and betrayals are all part of the fabric of his heritage.
The story could get there quicker, and, at key points, Obama would rather detach and look at a painful or heart wrenching event with a somewhat clinical or philosophical lens. I agree with other reviewers here that it is the type of book that you CAN put down. However, it does speak with with an authentic disaffected voice, one that you can hear a little in Obama's second book The Audacity of Hope, which is far less personal and more political.
 Nightmares August 15, 2008
12 out of 31 found this review helpful
Would be a better title from his polygamist alcoholic father who abanonded everyone in his family. Read closely and you will see the roots of the radical rage that we will all inherit from this corrupt loser...the father and the son...if he is ever elected. I dare you to delve into his past and believe he is a good man. Chicago anyone?
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