 "Grade-A Tripe" | 2009-11-11 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3QGF3WIYLJQGV |
| If you can get past the abominably poor language and grammar, composite characters, changed names, dramatized events, and fictionalized dialogue, your reward is...a tedious, overwrought, melodramatic, self-serving memoir about nothing from a 34-year old dilettante. Whether your politics place you on the left or right, the fact is DREAMS FROM MY FATHER is a clumsy, amateurish effort with little insight and even less truth, and it probably would have been more compelling and weighty had Obama waited until later in his life, after he actually accomplished something, to reflect on and write about his formative experiences. In contrast to the image propagated by mythologizers in his campaign and elements of the media, Obama demonstrates little skill as a writer and his work here falls far short of publication quality. DREAMS FROM MY FATHER shows that it's probably best for Obama that he didn't pursue a career as an author, though inarguably not so for the country. |
| |
| "Obama lies" | 2009-11-09 |
| - Reviewed By User: A8OXUEFF34LYU |
| See.... in his own words.... lies and half-truths. This is a man who is dismantling our country and destroying the freedom we used to know. He has never been truthful except to say he is going to transform our country. Well, he is doing it and the sheeple on the left are buying it hook line and sinker. |
| |
| "Ghost Written Narcissism" | 2009-10-28 |
| - Reviewed By drjimmoore |
| I read this and all recent books claimed to have been written by Obama. I also read that he had help from professional and ghost writers. Obama's books are more narcissism than evidence of a concern for social and economic justice under the US Constitution. Obama is just another great orator with less maturity, experience, and wisdom than most of our national and world thinkers. This book is just one more work of liberal Democrat propaganda. We all have dreams from our fathers...and mothers...but we choose to leave them out of print, so the book is just campaign and election fodder from a youthful and naive left-wing radical...and his even more left-wing and radical revolutionaries. At least Obama can truthfully claim to be African-American, an geographic-ethnic classification claimed in error by most other American blacks. After all, Obama may have been born in Africa and flown to Hawaii, or at least his father was a full African. |
| |
 "Nothing about Inheritance" | 2009-10-26 |
| - Reviewed By User: AGFIEZ2VK8XBB |
It took me (a person who reads a novel a week on average) 8 months to get through this book. I received it as a birthday present from my mother-in-law who thought it would be a good present for her "democratic son-in-law". It was a lovely thought, and appreciated. This book just doesn't fit the bill.
I did enjoy learning about Mr. Obama's childhood in Hawaii with his maternal grandparents and their attitudes toward race in contrast with the hate and angst coming from his "friends". I also really liked learning about his Kenyan relatives and their back story. The Chicago part of the book was really hard to get through and seemingly meaningless in relation to the purpose of the book.
Part of the problem here is that he stuck to a strictly linear telling of his life, with what he learned and when. But, what is most interesting and what influences us far more is our upbringing and our heritage (what this book seemingly purports to be about as well). Therefore, most of the last third of the book should have been up front and he should have given much more about his childhood.
Finally, I also felt like there was mostly just telling going on here (insert the infamous show versus tell tirade from English teachers everywhere). In other words, I got to hear about things that happened, but I never felt like I was there, as a part of it. This has to do with language and word choice mostly, but also because I never felt like I was inside Mr. Obama's head. I don't really know how he felt about different things or what connections he was making as he made them (which is kind of the purpose for telling the story linearly).
In summary, I felt like I got a good idea of the frustrations and difficulties of being a black man in America today (or, at least, 30 years ago), but I don't really see how this ties in with inheritance and his father's dreams.
If one of my college students turned in something like this for their own personal narrative, I would have given it a B- (a little above average for some things, but not meeting the needs of the assignment). |
| |
| "Uneven memoir and meditation, capped by a wonderful speech" | 2009-10-18 |
| - Reviewed By dkevans |
Obama wrote this memoir of his childhood, the start of his organizing career, and starting in law school. All of this is framed within the context of finding out more about who his father is and how that defines Obama himself.
This memoir / meditation is very uneven. I found the most compelling to be Obama's memoirs, especially the time in Indonesia, in Kenya, organizing in Chicago, and the epilogue about his wedding and other development among the family we've come to know in the book. Other segments, especially where he ruminates at great length on black identity in America, I found too long. With this audiobook, Obama narrates it, which is fun except that sometimes, that cool, calming tone turns monotonous.
An added bonus is Obama's speech from the 2004 Democratic National Convention (where Kerry was chosen as the candidate and Obama was running for the senate), which is inspiring and moving.
I wanted to love this, but I didn't. My review, like those Obama cites of when the book first came out, is mildly positive. |
| |
 "Barak Obama I claim you too" | 2009-10-17 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1LDZ3RQTBM136 |
I just finished reading Barack Obama's, Dreams from My Father.
I could not put it down. Not only because it gives great insight into a man I admire but also because he tackles the topic of personal identity and race. There were so many opportunities to both learn and identify from his story.
One of the reasons I have always liked Mr. Obama is that I sense in him a person who knew who he was. He had claims to a unique perspective of race. We all live in a society of black and white. And most of us only have one perspective. We have to deduce from a slanted view point the other sides. But Mr. Obama struggled personally from both sides. He could see the prejudices, short sightedness, ignorance and naivete from both perspectives that perpetuate racism, fear and distrust. And with this knowledge he had to figure out who he was. He is honest in his struggle to understand a father he hardly knew. He grew up in a white household, mother and grandparents who did their best at loving and teaching him well. But he grappled with his identity as a young black man. Claiming either extreme, black or white, would deny his family or his ancestry. And in the end he forms himself into a man to be admired and awed. His struggle for identity mirrors the struggle of every individual who grows from childhood to adulthood and must make sense of the hurts, ambiguities and scars of days gone by.
I am thrilled that he trusted his own voice in telling the story. Since I hear him often in news reels I know his voice. So it was easy for me to hear him telling the story in my head as he read. He let me right into his mind... to the grappling and tossing and turning of thoughts, beliefs and values. I am proud to live in a country where the story of a whole nation can be expressed in the reflections of this one man. He claims us as his own. Barack Obama, I claim you too. |
| |
Expedited Available
