Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, by Barack Obama.

Dreams From My Father is a reissue timed to coincide with Obama's run for the U.S. Senate, not the convention. The book was first published in 1995, after Obama became the first black president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Readers wanting to know about his climb to power will be disappointed (it was published three years before he was first elected to office, to the Illinois State Senate). And it reads much like what you would expect from a recent Harvard law graduate--a lot more political theory and philosophy than humor.

Ever since his show-stopping speech at the Democratic National Convention, Americans have been asking, "Obama who?" Well, along comes this work which the author himself is not sure how to characterize--to validate the credentials of this light-skinned, skinny black guy with the African name who got the attention of a national audience with his vision of our "true genius" and his "belief that we are connected as a people."

Still, Dreams From My Father is an important book, well worth reading. Barack Obama is a deep thinker (a colleague showing up at the office with blue contact lenses generated four pages of thoughts), a keen observer, an articulate visionary and a vivid storyteller.

Though some recollections seem so detailed as to seem suspect (not helped by his admission in the Introduction using composite characters, approximated dialogs and imprecise chronology), the overall portrait rings true and honest. He whisks us into his atypical childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia, his days as a campus activist in Los Angeles, a community organizer in Chicago and his return to Kenya to meet his relatives.

Dreams From My Father

This unusual autobiography offers fascinating insight into what shaped the life of the man now Their President of the United states. Most likely to soon he then the lone black U.S. Senator Super Man. An outsider economically and culturally and trapped between cultures, he was the offspring of a white mother and African father--Obama channeled his anger and alienation into determination that changed neighborhoods, and may well change the nation, see for your self after purchasing this wonderful book.

The audio-book of Dreams from My Father earned him a Grammy Award for best spoken word album.

Mr Obama and is second book, The Audacity of Hope. This publication arrived to the top of the New York Times and Amazon bestseller lists. His talent for captivating the American people and the world. His spoken word and actions is matched by a gift for Intelligence and National anticipates for "CHANGE"; his 2004 keynote electrified the Democrat National Convention, inspiring a devoted and ever growing following both nationally and around the world.

In Springfield Illinois, just like another tall, willowy, relatively inexperienced lawyer who 150 years ago took on and beat an array of heavyweight opponents to become President. Barrack Obama declared his running for the White House. It was only natural that he did so on the same steps on which Abraham Lincoln had famously declared that 'a house divided against itself cannot stand.

Austin Texas

Since then he has gone on to break all fundraising records, overtaking formal democratic rival Hillary Clinton and Republican Senator John McCain, with a far higher number of individual donations. All this despite refusing to take money from special interests. His rallies and speeches across the US draw record crowds, and not just in the 'blue' states; 20,000 people braved a rainy day in Austin Texas to hear him speak, reportedly one of the largest turnouts for a political event in Texan history.

It takes a Village

The question we are left with is, will he be able to add 'first black president' to this catalogue of achievements, and if so, what kind of president will he be?

If we are searching for clues about the man rather than the presidential candidate Dreams from My Father is the most rewarding read, a candid and moving account of Obama's early struggles with notions of identity and race. Obama was born to a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya, who met as students in Hawaii.

His father left when Obama was two to study at Harvard,

eventually moving back to Kenya where he worked as a government economist. His mother remarried an Indonesian and Obama recalls his early childhood in Indonesia as: 'a joyous time, full of adventure and mystery--days of chasing down chickens and running from water buffalo, nights of shadow puppets and ghost stories, and street vendors bringing delectable sweets to the door.' Obama returned to Hawaii to live with his grandparents while attending school, and then on to Occidental and Columbia Universities.

After graduation, he moved to Chicago to work as a community organizer, co-ordinating housing and job creation projects in Chicago's South Side. It is here, through this grueling work in some of the poorest areas of America, where Obama's political ideas begin to take shape. His religious convictions also deepened as he began to attend Trinity United Church of Christ.

Trinity United Church of Christ

In the book Dreams From My Father a particularly memorable scene, he recounts the story of the emphatic sermon from which his second book takes its title and his political campaign takes its inspiration. The pastor speaks to the congregation of the hardships people have suffered through the ages; from slavery, apartheid, hunger and apathy, to their everyday struggles to pay the bills, cope with an abusive partner or absent parent.

Mr Obama

these stories--of survival and freedom, and hope--become our story, my story ... until this black church, in this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people unto future generations and into a larger world.' We can only wonder whether, when he wrote these words in 1995, he knew how prophetic they would turn out to be.

We can also wonder whether he realized that his openness in the book Dreams From My Father would one day be manipulated by his political opponents, or indeed whether this would have made any difference. Dreams from My Father, with its admission that Obama took drugs as a young man; the stories of his Muslim grandfather with his many wives; the early attraction to elements of Black nationalism; have all provided plenty of fodder for the religious right and conservative media to portray Obama in alarmist and overtly prejudicial ways.

Fox News has made much play of his middle name, Hussein and the (inaccurate) claim that he attended a madras in Indonesia; right-wing 'shock jock' Rush Limbaugh repentantly runs a song called 'Barack the Magic Negro' on his show. But it is these honest, thoughtful and sensitively told stories, of childhood days in Indonesia and adult journeys of discovery to Kenya, that make the book so compelling.

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