Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance | 
| Author: Barack Obama
Publisher: Crown
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  280 reviews
Sales Rank: 262
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
Publication Date: January 9, 2007
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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 275 more reviews...
 Regina's Soul September 6, 2008
Barack Obama is an incredible story teller. Reading "Dreams from My Father" was a most enlightening experience. By the time we got to Africa I felt like Obama was a dear friend sharing his life with me. Meeting family for the first time in Africa felt like me going home to meet my ancestors. The reading was delicious and I didn't want it to end. I urge my family and friends to meet the man who is making history and spend some quality time with him. It feels honest and it's so obvious that it was written before there were any presidential aspirations. A documented story of a man before any publicity spin.
A peak inside the man. September 6, 2008
I have officially drank the cool-aide and think Obama is fantastic. Superbly written, wonderful insights into modern racial issues soulful and deeply honest. He has my vote!
 i loved it but it took me forever September 5, 2008
i love this book and i think the writing is amazing. idont know how he found time to write all of this but it was amazing. on the other hand it took me foreever. esepily the chacogo part. it was still amazing
 Disappointing September 5, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I read this book because I wanted to know more about Obama. I wanted (and expected) to like him, but unfortunately I was disappointed. This book has a very whiny, "poor me" kind of tone. Not to say that black people don't have a tough time, but there seems to be a lot of blaming "the white man" and "white folks" in general. News flash: we "white folks" don't just sit around plotting how we can make black folks' lives difficult.
Recommended reading: The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes
Past politics, this is an entertaining and educational, readable book September 1, 2008
Having read "The Audacity of Hope" and been incredibly inspired by it, I expected more of the same thoughtful discussion when I moved on to "Dreams From My Father." Was I ever surprised to discover an American Novel - with soaring descriptions, gifted human characterization, and appropriate suspense. Those who read this book hoping to get an inside look at a potential president will get what they paid for. Those just hoping to read a good story about the American experience will find what they want as well - even if they had never heard of Barack Obama (due to living on another planet, no doubt). As a white woman in the younger generation, with a less jaundiced view of race relations, I cringed early on at all the racial obsessions Barack entertained as a young man. Then I was grateful to get this inside look at what are true issues for my fellow citizens of color. (It's been a while since I read Alice Walker and Toni Morrison.) Once I understood that Obama was presenting his struggles with identity as an honest attempt to explain the complex issues that being interracial present, I relaxed and appreciated the candor. My only criticism, from a casual reader's perspective, is that the departures from narrative on his MULTIPLE soul-searching musings go on for pages and pages and toward the end of the book seem extensive. His editor should have just trimmed some of those for the sake of flow. The ease of reading isn't quite what it is in "Audacity," but obviously it is far and away above what most attorneys can produce in attempts at entertaining fiction.
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