Customer Reviews
Barack Obama for President Please! - By: I. Losada, 29 Jun 2008 
This is a truly remarkable book. And I deeply hope that this thoughtful man becomes the president.
This book, which is not ghosted, was written when he was 33 years old long before he had any thoughts of a political career. In it he explores what is means to have a black Afrcan father that he never knew & a whilte American mother & seemingly to belong no-where. As he grows up he has to discover what it means to be black while being raised by white parents and, while doing so gives the reader a gentle & loving education into the issues of race.
As a white 'middle class' girl these are not issues that I have ever had to consider. It's easy for me to say 'I don't see colour, I only see people' as I have never had to see colour, I have never been reminded of my colour or had assumptions made about me based upon it.
But the book isn't just about colour - it's also about our inheritance, whatever that may be, it's about our personal history & having a sense of it, about understanding our parents & being able to forgive them because of that understanding. And about embracing & celebrating our inheritance.
It is a deeply moving book & I found myself crying in it more than once despite the fact that it is not written in a way that manipulates emotion. I would give this book ten stars even if it were written by an unknown author who never wrote another word. The fact that it is written by a man who may be president, is purely an added pleasure.
If a truly great book is one that alters us in some way & enables us to see the world around us differently - then this book succeeds on every level.
The very first 21st century voice for historical change - By: Jacques COULARDEAU, 24 Jun 2008 This book is not a memoir or even Memoirs. It is a novel, a non-fictional true novel because life is a novel & even at times poetry, & Barack Obama is an absolutely perfect writer who captures the living texture of this life with gusto, taste & style. The book of course is a chase & search for the author's father by the author himself as far as far can be, including in the green hills of Africa. But it is also a lot more. It is the discovery of family roots growing in two different soils, continents or even universes. But Barack Obama is not psychotic nor schizophrenic, so he tells us the story of how he brought unity to himself without in any way negating the dual carriage way of his personality. He shows & even demonstrates how one cannot be anything in life if one does not build that personal unity from the patchwork of their lives. Some of his brothers, or sisters, or parents succeed with various methods. Some others fail or at least linger in unsuccessful attempts. Now, that is only the first element of the book that makes it an autobiography of sort. It is though & yet a lot more & I am going to give only a few examples. I like his "Home Squared" or even Home Power Three or Home Tripled, or whatever. I will insist on the power element because this approach of home gives power to the subject. This power comes from the ability of the subject to join the immediate home environment in which he or she lives to the original family home from which he or she comes, that is to say the parents' home that is in Obama's case double since he knew his father at first as coming from Kenya seen as his home & he discovers that he came from what this father callled his Home Squared, that is to say the home base of his father's father. Obama's conception of a human being seems to be such a piled up pyramid made of many tiers, strata, layers, one on top of the other in the present, one deeper than the other into the past, & what about the future that gets its inspiration from this heap of potentials & possible realizations of one's dreams. This leads to a remark on authenticity that cannot be attached to one personal parameter connected to the outside world, including African-ness. Authenticity is attached to the contradictory unified patchwork that makes us what we are inside. I think Obama could easily reach beyond & add "at any discrete moment of one's life", no two moments even in close temporal succession being ever the same. We are ever changing & yet always the same, because we are what we see or even dream ourselves. The last point I will make is about his dynamic vision of the law. He knows the law can be seen as reflecting narrow-minded interests & greed. But he also knows that the law is a human creation that comes from the conversation between & among various individuals & circumstances reflecting the complex conflictive context of humanity at any moment in its history, a conversation that is aiming at creating balance & equilibrium even if in many cases it is biased & severely one-sided. But his phrase "a nation arguing with its conscience" is beautiful & worth sitting in any sacred corpus of canonical texts, including Goethe's Faust Second Part. It is, & should always be, a canon of American culture because we hold such truths to be self evident.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Highly insightful, compassionate, and moving - By: Alma, 14 Apr 2008 Whether in his account of his childhood, or of his work as community organizer, or of his journey to Kenya to meet his father's family, every page of this book reveals a mind gifted with deep insight, & a mix of extreme intelligence steeped in compassion & sensitivity. It is beautifully written & moving, with lines that would cause goose-bumps & hearty laughs alternatively.
Obama's words reveal a man who seeks to penetrate into the heart of things in search of that place beyond differences- whether in opinion, race, class or even nation- of common humanity. His mixed heritage, his sharp intellect, & his sensitivity, alll equip him to cross boundaries & access that place of common heritage. It is a rare combination of philosophical insight & heartfelt compassion, along with a practical sense, whereby alll these faculties are constantly mobilized towards problem-solving, whether those problems of trying to understand his own personal history, of which some parts were missing for many years of his life, or that of trying to bring about changes in the community of Chicago in which he worked as an organizer.
More than ever before, reading what he wrote some 14 years ago & before he started his political career, I am convinced that that is the type of man that is capable of bringing about the change that is desperately needed at this moment in history. His is an extraordinary mind, coupled with a capacity for understanding the other side & speaking to it in the common language of humanity, a combination of qualities not commonly found in presidential candidates (or politicians for that matter). After 8 disastrous years of an "you're-either-with-us-or-against-us" administration, that sought to resolve conflicts by disrespect to civil liberties at home, & blind force abroad, in short, alll manners of bullying in the name of security, the best chance of veering off the pit that such an approach inevitably leads to, is through the agency of someone with such a vision & political talent as Obama's.
Should he get the job, however, I hope that Obama would still find time to write, for, as a writer, he is a veritable treat!
Excellent book by an extraordinary man. - By: Customer, 29 Mar 2008 This is an excellent book by Barack Obama. It is intelligent, honestly written & very thoughtful - it's possibly the most interesting book ever written by a politician. Obama is an extraordinary person. The world will be a better place should he become the next president of the USA.
Brilliant - a must for the modern age - By: Sofia, 26 Mar 2008 Forgetting for a moment who wrote this book; this is an engaging, thoughtful, intelligent, perceptive read. This is a real meditation on race & specificallly, on what it means to grow up & search for one's racial identity in modern America. And yet, it is beautifully written. Rich in descriptive detail & almost novelistic vignettes, it is also pacey & hard to put down.
Returning to the author, it is truly hard to believe that this was written by a politician (although he wasn't at the time of writing). It is such a good read & provides such a thoughtful & open account of Obama's views & experiences, that it is truly breathtaking in this age of political posturing.
Read this to learn more about Obama. Read this to learn more about the divisions of America. Read this to learn about the black experience both in the US & in Kenya. Read this for the beauty of its writing, but above alll, read it, you won't be disappointed.
