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Feb 04, 2008

Sarah rated it:

As Super Tuesday approaches and we try to separate empty promises and strategic moves from real, actual thoughts and goals, I couldn’t have read a better book than Dreams From My Father.

Here’s why: even though I didn’t realize it when I picked it up, Obama wrote this book over ten years ago, when he was fresh out of law school and long before he was worrying about what people wanted to hear. It is, I think, a great way to “get to know” the candidate outside of the media, the hype, an More...

6 comments like (44 people liked it)

Aug 04, 2008

Michelle rated it:

With Barack Obama running for president, I thought it would be a good idea to take a look at who this candidate was. I had been warned by another friend (not a Obama supporter, I should note) that it was poorly written and its message unclear. This perplexed me a bit since that had been contrary to what it seemed like everyone had been saying.

Well, I, on the other hand, found it a completely absorbing read. It's well-written and an interesting story. I wish everyone could read it; th More...

0 comments like (16 people liked it)

Jun 19, 2009

Siria rated it:

In the introduction, Obama writes that looking back on this book after the passage of over a decade, he winces at inelegant phrasing, and wishes that he could excise perhaps fifty of its four hundred and fifty pages. That's the kind of self-critique with which this book abounds—honest and very deliberately even-handed. It's a critique I agree with, by the way—Obama has a tendency to go off on slight rhetorical flights which may sound good when delivered in a speech, but which need to be tempered More...

0 comments like (11 people liked it)

Apr 20, 2007

Janine rated it:

Reading Senator Obama's book reminded me of Umberto Eco's seminal work, Role of the Reader. (Hazily reminded me, as I read it over 10 years ago.) In the first part of that book, Eco conjures the idea of archetypical readers and discusses the different ways that each reader approaches a text. As I read Dreams from My Father I read it as two different readers. First, I read it as a book lover and critic; second, as a voter. (Listed in order of priority, I must confess.)
As a memoir, I thought More...

3 comments like (7 people liked it)

Apr 09, 2007

Khrys rated it:

Barack Obama's life not only makes for a great story, it shows a lot about the character of the man telling it--both in the way he tells it, but also in the events that happened and the way he handled them. I am impressed by his level of honesty about himself--he does not paint himself to be pristine, but makes himself very human. It is in this exposure of his vulnerabilities, his fears, his insecurities that he becomes like us--simply human. On that level, we can connect to the story of his lif More...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Jan 25, 2009

Chris rated it:

This is one of those books that I want to buy for everyone I know. Apart from any of the political ideas in the book or whether or not one is excited by his presidency, Obama is a fantastic writer -- this is one of the best memoirs I have ever read. Apart from an occasional slip into melodramatic prose (very occasional, and certainly less than the average memoir), the prose balanced clarity and description, and Obama very consciously keeps from slipping into nostalgia or over-idealizing any ti More...

14 comments like (8 people liked it)

Jul 22, 2011

Lorenzo rated it:

Forget for a moment who the author has become. This is not a book written by a politician or a would-be president. It's a book that was written by someone who subsequently became those things. For that reason, it's a very honest account of an American coming to terms with who he is and where he's from. As a bonus, Obama happens to be an excellent writer. He has a good sense of how to fashion an interesting narrative, so his personal story is very engaging.

As a normal part of becoming More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jan 21, 2009

Trena rated it:

I resisted reading this book for a long time based solely on the title. I hated to think that our President(!!!!-happy day today) would have fantasies about his absent father and imagine him to be all that is good and just in the world while ignoring or perhaps even resenting his mother, the one who actually raised him and was there through all the dirty diapers, report cards, and snotty noses. However, I did intend to read it eventually so when one of my book clubs chose it I checked it out. More...

6 comments like (4 people liked it)

Aug 06, 2008

Shannon rated it:

What a thought-provoking book! The book is split into three sections (Origins, Chicago and Kenya). I tried splitting up my reading of it in roughly the same manner since it's easier for me to get through a non-fiction book if I intersperse it with fiction.

I think each section left me with a different series of questions. Origins left me thinking about community: its value, how we choose it, are chosen by it, and what it means to be within and without community. Origins also made More...

1 comment like (7 people liked it)

May 18, 2008

Lyn rated it:

At first I had trouble believing this book was written by a politician--reading it felt like being Alice walking around in Wonderland seeing things through a funhouse mirror. Politicians are supposed to write safe, sanitized books with boring but reassuring cadences. Maybe we expect them to be like airplane pilots--it only feels right when they stay within the lines and pretend like they're completely in charge of themselves and everything else. But this one veered off into directions only a tru More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

May 05, 2008

Sarah rated it:

Barack Obama
Dreams From My Father
New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004
453 pp. $13.95
1-4000-8277-3

The United States is recognized as a nation of immigrants with the ability to re-invent themselves and adapt to the culture of their adopted home. However, it is the children of these immigrants who seek authenticity in forgotten and disregarded ethnic traditions, in search of their roots, of an identity. “Dreams From My Father,” Barack Obama’s autobiograp More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Mar 31, 2008

Lula rated it:

The reviews I have perused are about people's feelings about their projections of what Obama means to them. Reviewers are sharing their feelings about the symbolism of Obama, and not reviewing the book. And as a symbol - wow - what a wide variety of feelings from far extremes he represents.

Thirteen years ago I read this out of curiosity. We just weren't sure what he would have to say. At the time it wasn't exactly a bestseller. But it was worth checking out to see if I recognize More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Dec 30, 2008

Ganesh rated it:

When Barack Obama’s father was a young man, he went with his father-in-law and friends to a bar in Hawaii where a man loudly complained about having to sit “next to a nigger.”

“The room fell quiet and people turned to my father, expecting a fight. Instead, my father stood up, walked over to the man, smiled, and proceeded to lecture him about the folly of bigotry, the promise of the American dream, and the universal rights of man.”

The man apologized, and he tried to show h More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Tasha rated it:

Book was boring. Lots of redundancy, meaning it was the same topic over and over again…I wouldn’t recommend.

1 comment like (7 people liked it)

Dec 28, 2008

Rose rated it:

Wow. The man can write. This was an excellent book about figuring out who you are and what your place in the universe might be. On the surface it was about how to be a black (or biracial) American, but it was also about being a third-culture kid, and deeper still, it addressed the question we all have to face sometime, even if we're tenth-generation New Englanders: who are you? how do you fit in with what has gone before? what will you preserve and pass down? and what will you change?

More...

3 comments like (3 people liked it)

May 25, 2011

Jeanette rated it:

I knew there was no way I'd ever read this whole thing in print, so I listened to the abridged audio book. It's read by the author, and it felt cozy to sit here right in my own home and have Mr. President tell me all about the first 20-some years of his life. This was written way back when "Barry" was elected as the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. I hadn't known it was that old.

I'm very glad I listened to this. It really helped me understand wh More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Apr 07, 2009

Dollie rated it:

This was our book club book and, as luck would have it, one my friend Paul had lent me. Timing? Destiny? I don't know but I did enjoy the book very much. Our president may count writing as one of his many talents for this book stands on it's own no matter what else the author may have achieved. Our book club discussion (that have a way of touching so little on the book and more on our children and ourselves) took what I thought was a strange turn focusing more on race, entitlement. I figur More...

5 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 30, 2008

Bettynz rated it:

Goodness! Well, having never previously read the autobiography of a politician, this book was a pleasant surprise in lots of ways. Who'd have thought his family was more complicated than mine (as one of my friends commented last night!). I was seriously losing track of brothers, (sisters were easy - just the 2) and to still be meeting new ones right up till the end was amazing. Let alone uncles, step-uncles and aunts, grandmothers and step-grandmothers and so on and on!

There were so More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jun 11, 2008

bill rated it:

okay. first of all, i found it impossible while reading this book to forget, even for a moment, that its author might be our next president. this means it is very difficult to appraise the book on its own merits. but i will try. i should mention at the outset, in a spirit of full disclosure, that i am cautiously a supporter of obama, although i do not drink the kool-aid. i think he is a natural leader, well-organized & given to introspection, and i think this might be a nice change of pace for t More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

May 26, 2011

Nancy rated it:

This was a hard book for me to “rate.” It is difficult to untangle the book from all the publicity on the presidential candidate. I voted for Barack Obama in the Oregon primary just before I finally got to the head of the line for the book at the library. There was nothing in the book that really surprised me. I am still glad I voted for him.

I really enjoyed the first three-fourths of “Dreams from My Father” and was impressed with Obama’s humanity and admission of flaws. This is c More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 27, 2007

Leonora of rated it:

I enjoyed this autobiography very much. I read it in 24 hours, interspersed with work and sleep, and I was really carried along by Obama's story and ideas. It was deeper than I thought it would be. It's about a search for himself (and his father) and his transformation from innocent Hawaiin boy to angry college student to idealist Chicago organizer was painful and endearing and familiar. His ideas about race were uniquely expressed (to my ears anyway) and thought-provoking. More than ever, I bel More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 08, 2007

Michelle rated it:

[written July 2005]

This week at the library, it was a pair of politicians' autobiographies: Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama, and It's My Party Too by Christine Whitman.

Reading politicians' books immediately puts me on edge. perhaps it's because I know I'm already starting out on uneven footing, that their world is inconceivably more complex, more filled with intricate negotiation and navigation, and that by reducing it to concrete paragraphs there's an instantaneous More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Jan 18, 2009

Karen rated it:

There are very few books on my list that warrant five stars, but this is one of them. I read Barack Obama's books out of order, and while I enjoyed and appreciated The Audacity of Hope, it is certainly the book that one writes right before one runs for president.

Written while Mr. Obama was in his 30s, Dreams From My Father is without guile, without agenda, and is truly one of the most beautifully written, moving books I have ever read. The book traces Obama's quest for self and p More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Patricia rated it:

Did Barack Obama write this book himself? Man, it was so full of cliches that I almost threw it against the wall, had it not belonged to the library. The most interesting parts take place out of the U.S. Too much concentration on frustrated-black-man syndrome, trying to find a black community and not enough (for me) on how he fared within this community as mixed. Even though HE chose one ethnicity over another, I want to know how he was treated because other people take notice of a mixture with More...

5 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 29, 2008

Rebecca rated it:

I started and re-started this memoir over the course of the last two years, and got initially bogged down in the details of Obama's life as a community organizer. There is in no doubt that there are numerous scenes that could have and should have been omitted, and moments where his purpose seems ill-defined, however, persistence pays off. Scenes from his childhood in Indonesia and the insights gathered there, along with emerging discoveries about his family in Kenya, were highlights for me. He More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

May 16, 2009

Eric rated it:

Dreams from My Father

I give this a superlative rating because of its clear statement of what it means to be black in a racialized environment, and because of Obama's ability to confront the complexities of his own biracial/multicultural heritage without succumbing to romanticism or denying any aspect of his heritage. He opts for a black identity for the same reason nearly all black/white biracials do -- a white identity isn't possible when you're his color and being white requires a More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 24, 2008

Sarah rated it:

I did not expect to love this book--I expected to read it and be glad that its author is soon to be my president. And I think that may be where I am with it. If this book were written by someone who had simply gone on to be a law professor I had never heard of, it would have been interesting but maybe a little naive in the writing. However, as the writings of our next president, it is heartening in ways I would have trouble putting into a book review. We are about to be lead by a man who has More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 20, 2009

Cat rated it:

It is heavenly to read such a beautifully written book and to know that the author is now president. I found especially powerful his account of his childhood in Hawaii and his relationships with his mother, grandparents, and elusive father. There is one passage in the Chicago section of the book that had me wondering how Obama must feel in the restrictions of the presidency. On the black governor of Chicago, Harold Washington, Obama wrote:

"beneath the radiance of Harold's vic More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 04, 2009

Heidi rated it:

I am really glad I read this book because I did find out things about Pres. Obama that I probably would have never known. I read about his work as a community organizer but feel that anyone who actively volunteers for their church or the local PTA could be a community organizer. I felt frustrated by the fact that many criticized Mitt Romney's run for the Presidency because of his Mormon faith and ties to polygamy yet Obama's father and grandfather both had multiple wives that they would impreg More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 31, 2011

Michael G. rated it:

I had no problem reading this book. I was curiously amused at the accuracy of his quotes. Perhaps he has a memory with enough gigs. I'm thinking of the interaction he has with his relatives in Kenya. Auma, Mark and several others. The text was more like a stage play.

Having read this, I have a view of my President that I cannot get from Faux news, or MSNBC, or CNN or my loco channels. I read 43's book during the same several days because I like all things balanced in my life.
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3 comments like (1 person liked it)