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Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
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Average Rating:  out of 324 Reviews
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Price: $25.95
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Sale: $15.29
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Manufacturer: Crown
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EAN (European Article Number): 9780307383419
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Hardcover
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Author: Barack Obama
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Publisher: Crown
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Edition: Reprint
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Dewey Decimal Number: 973.04960730092
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Publication Date: 2007-01-09
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Reading Level: 464
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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
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Review Summary: "Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, Hallowed Be Thy Name." |
Date: 2008-11-22 |
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Details: Published in 1995, long before Barack Obama could have even conceived of running for president, this coming-of-age memoir brilliantly reflects the confusion of having mixed race parents and of being a "black" man in today's America. It also finely tells the story of a boy and then a man and his elusive delusions about his missing father. Finally tracking down his heritage and the truth, through Kansas, then Hawaii, and then Kenya, Obama spins a truthful and authentic tale about losing and then finding himself through his father. This tale of the son seeking his father is an ancient one, and Barack does it justice here. He transcends race, and embraces his fragmented past in order to make himself as whole as he can be.
This is a literary work. Its metaphors and descriptions are well thought out and satisfying to read. It bears contrast with James Baldwin's "Go Tell It On the Mountain" and "The Color of Water." Read it, and be amazed that we have this thoughtful, brilliant, introspective, self-aware person as our president. What a miracle! |
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Review Summary: The Seinfeld candidate |
Date: 2008-11-22 |
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Details: Bill Ayers sure can write a good book. Some great fiction mixed with some nice platitudes that everyone can project on to - like the candidate himself. |
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Review Summary: An Insightful and Powerful Book |
Date: 2008-11-21 |
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Details: Barack Obama has written an insightful and powerful book of self-discovery that shaped him and his father's legacy. Obama's search for the truth about race and faith has revealed the powerful character of this great American leader. This book guides us to a further study of identity, class and race alongside Jeffery Leving's www.ourblackheritage.com.
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Review Summary: Obama, a remarkable generalizer |
Date: 2008-11-17 |
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Details: I have rarely been so privileged to read a book such as DREAMS OF MY FATHER. Obama reveals his thought processes as he struggled to find his place in the larger sicial fabric. Were that all, this would not be so great a book. But, he describes his maturation in thinking as he interacted and learned from others. And, while personally growng, he was able to empathize with others from virtually all walks of life, to relate to them and to abstract the essence of their needs and being. Finally, he was able to integrate those observations into a larger vision of society and how to effect it in a positive way. All of this is written in the most compelling language. He is a great and poetic writer. |
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Review Summary: Get to know Obama |
Date: 2008-11-17 |
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Details: This man has a truly inspirational and amazing life and history. I devoured the book and came back for more. I've since recommended it to friends and family who have felt that they "don't really know the man".
Now that he's been elected, I hope everyone will seek out his books and get to know him a little better and let him touch your life as he's definitely touched mine. |
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