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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
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Avg. Customer Rating:  298 reviews
Sales Rank: 169
Media: Hardcover
Edition: Reprint
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 293 more reviews...
 Poetic Introspection October 11, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This amazingly frank memoir bares the soul of a confused and deprived, then ambitious and determined, man of his times. The multi-racial, multi-cultural, migratory experience of Barack Obama both reflects and defines the post-modern secular society that the United States has become in the 21st century. This masterfully told tale transcends the senator's own life to illustrate the trials and pain of the racial divide that persist both here and abroad. It portrays the chronically sad consequences of tribal and colonial history for Africans, Europeans and Americans.
By turns troubling yet hopeful, morose yet humourous, depressing yet inspiring, this book probes your emotions and challenges your worldview. Obama weaves an incredible tapestry of characters, places and moods with language more befitting a poet than a politician. His look inside himself is as deep and penetrating as his thoughts about the human condition. Although not everyone will agree with his conclusions, no one can deny his convictions.
 Why can't we just call it shameless propaganda? October 10, 2008
7 out of 25 found this review helpful
This is typical shameless garbage that the criminal elite use to promote themselves and their underlings. And don't be ridiculous and think that slick BHO even wrote this book. None of our phoney, criminal, deviant, controlled "leaders" ever write any of the shameless books that are attributed to them. Why do we continue to be so naive and foolish? Why do we continue to think that we live in any sort of democracy?
What can be said for sure about BHO is that he is an attractive man who can spew forth what is written for him in an eloquent manner. Oh, and he has nice white teeth. That's it folks, and I could care less what Oprah and all those little Hollywood turds gush about him, because BHO is a manufactured cut-out of a candidate who will be completely controlled by all the usual suspects. But, don't think just anyone could do what BHO does. He has a small army of helpers creating his image, dressing him, booking teeth whitening appointments, and white washing his past - especially on the internet. He has obviously had quite a bit of training in public speaking, but not just the "normal" type that you and I might sign up for. No, no. What he's been well trained in (as was Clinton, Reagan, and many others) is neurolinguistic programming (NLP) and subtle hypnotic/subliminal speech patterns. Of course it also helps a great deal that everywhere he speaks is "specially wired" for sound, which affects the audience in ways they probably couldn't comprehend or believe. This type of frequency manipulation of brain waves and body rhythms has been perfected for well over 2 decades. But, that's getting off topic...
In regards to this book, ... *** news flash *** After having spent about 5 minutes writing the above, I pushed "publish review" to get the process started and went for about a 3 minute bathroom break and then returned to finish writing, and when I returned there was already 3 "not helpful" votes registered for this review in that very, very short time frame. And you say you don't believe that a small army of "trolls" patrol the internet trying to misdirect and neutralize on behalf of the criminal elite??!!
Anyways, the amount of misdirection, inconsistency, undocumented statements / claims, and total shameless introspective pyscho mish-mash in this book is gut wrenching (in a bad way). But for a sane person searching for the truth, here are some questions to ponder: where was his father born in reality? how many wives / offspring did he have? as a "poor goat farming" family, how did he get the expensive initial education that he did? what are the connections to the Ford Foundation and the Rockefellers? where was BHO's mother born and why is there no records for the first 10 years of her life? if she was schooled in Lebanon initially, why? why can't the BHO Team produce a birth certificate from the State of Hawaii if he was born there? why did the BHO Team finally release a "document of live birth" that was shown to be a forgery? where was BHO born then? why was BHO's "maternal grandfather" working for the Rockefellers? why is there essentially no evidence that BHO went to Columbia University and why does he refuse to release transcipts in order to prove it? what is the connection of Indonesia to BHO really? And these are just a few questions a great researcher by the name of Don Nicoloff brings up in his writing for the Idaho Observer.
Here's my personal take: BHO
 EXCEPTIONAL ON VIRTUALLY EVERY LEVEL October 7, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Out of all the autobiographies I've read of prominent men and women, and particularly those wih political ambition and desire for high office, I don't think I've ever read anything as frank and straightforward as this book of Obama's. Writing about oneself is difficult for most people most of the time, and here, describing one's childhood (or bi-racial childhood as Americans often say) involves displaying whatever conclusions you've reached as you assenbked your emotional and intellectual self, in different parts of this country, and in Indonesia, and that must surely have been profoundly difficult.
Considering the high level of education Obama's achieved, that the book is written well should be no surprise. But what is so amazing about all this is that currently the election campaign of Obama's Republican opponent is attempting to encourage the voting public that there is an impenetrable veil of mystery surrounding candidate Obama; mystery about his morals, his political affiliations, his religious obligations.. It seems obvious to me that anybody in this country or this world could find the man revealed with maximum clarity simply by reading this exceptional book. The latest Republican hocus-pocus is nonsense. It depends on the shameful racist tradition that says no white person can ever accept any level of intimacy -- certainly not an equitable one -- with any person of color, and that understanding would be a breach of caste.
We will be reading this splendid book for many years, both as adults and as students and children. It will become a young people's library classic.
 Zzzz...Zzzz...HUH! what oh erm....Zzzz...Zzzz October 7, 2008
3 out of 13 found this review helpful
ok first off I am not in favor for Obama's political ideals, lets just get that out of the way now. This Book was Sooo Boring. I wanted to know more of the man, and what better way the by his own words. I think I found out more stuff about him before he was alive. He talks about the great life of his family and the web of emotions connected to the race differance between his father and the mothers side. He also goes on about the "true love" connection of his father and mother ...BEFORE HE WAS CONCIEVED... sorry but if I was to write a book of my own life and the connection I had with my father, I'd might start with my earliest memory. He talks of stroking of hands and gazing of eyes like he was there. People might call this filler and/or juicing the story up, I call it packing a troubled past up with white lies to make it look presentable.
Saying that I find much of his ideals and "black" reactionary remarks in the book racist and selling out the "we can do it" idea to a self-victimizing hate speech.
Dreams From My Father October 7, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is the most compelling story that really resonates with me. Barak Obama's life connects with a little bit of everyone no matter your race or background. In his book, Barak Obama articulates the near and distant relationships specifically with his grandparents and estranged parents, which ultimately shaped his character to what it is now; open, inclusive and inspirational. After reading this book, I knew that this was no ordinary man. If an ordinary man he is certainly destined for extraordinary things. He is genuine and open about his past even the troubling part he tells about his youth. You Must Read! I was spell bound, once you start reading you won't stop until finished. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
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