Dreams from My Father is a Dream!

Barak Obama was offered a book contract after becoming the editor of the Harvard Law Review. So he wrote his first book, Dreams from my Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, which detailed his life from his birth to his journey to Kenya.

Mr. Barak was born in 1961 to a mother from Kansas and a Kenyan father. He grew up in Hawaii with his mother's family, meeting his father only briefly during that time, as his father left Barack and his mother to study and return to Kenya. When his mother remarried, Mr. Obama, affectionately known as "Barry" to most family and friends, moved with her to Indonesia with his stepfather. While there, Barry attended a local school, where he quickly made friends and learned the native tongue. Mr. Obama then attended college in Los Angeles, where he attempted to reconcile his background with that of other youth of color at the same college. The result of his own, internal struggle to come to terms with who he was, in light of the memories that he had of his father, led him to accept a job as a community organizer in Chicago, right out of college. Eventually, Obama travels to Kenya after learning that he has been accepted to Harvard Law School. While there, Obama meets his Kenyan family and is driven tirelessly around the country, to meet various family members, including half brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles.

I could not put this narrative down. Obama provided an eloquent and flowing account of his life and his struggles. He was also surprisingly and refreshingly candid in his narrative, for a politician, discussing his alcohol and drug use during his younger, more rebellious years. He was also candid about race relations during his period in Chicago; what you saw with him with regards to this section was what you got. Reading his book was wonderful by all accounts and read almost like a novel. At times, I forgot that I was reading the autobiography of one of the frontrunners for the Democratic Presidential Nomination because the story was so flowing and well-told. The only criticism that I had was that the book ended and that it ended at the point in time at which it ended. The book ended in 1995, just prior to Obama entering Harvard Law School, running for Senate, winning his election and participating in one of the governing bodies of this country. I would have loved to see how Mr. Obama described his time at Harvard Law School, what he thought about race relations there and in the Senate and how he thought of himself and his work in the Senate.

I loved this book and thought that it gave great insight into the life of a man. If you want to learn more about a potential candidate, then I would suggest that you get this book