Great read! about understanding and finding out his past upbringing,life and history etc (paperback!)

“I thought I could start over, you see. But now I know you can never start over. Not really. You think you have control, but you are like a fly in somebody else’s web. Sometimes I think that’s why I like accounting. All day, you are only dealing with numbers. You add them, multiply them, and if you are careful, you will always have a solution. There’s a sequence there. An order. With numbers, you can have control….” “Winter came and the city [Chicago] turned monochrome -- black trees again

Audiobook.....read by Barack Obama An oldie but goodie:It was wonderful listening to Obama. He’s so cordial......and..... ....ordinary and extraordinary!I especially loved when Obama talked about his mother. I laughed when ‘mom’ forced Obama to eat his breakfast each day before school — with Obama rolling his eyes as if it was torture ( I could relate - I did everything I could to get out of eating breakfast as a kid)....... but where my mother just gave up and went back to bed — Obama’s mother

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; there are so m...

In early 2017, for many people in the U.S. and abroad, Obama nostalgia is real and rampant. I used the moment to look back at Barack Obama before he was president, before he was a US Senator and a state senator for Illinois, and discover the making of the man in his memoir Dreams from My Father. Overall, I'd give this 3.5 stars and round up to 4 stars. I very much enjoyed parts of Obama's journey to adulthood, especially his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia which I found interesting and well-wr...

I listened to this audiobook in the waning days of Obama's presidency. Dreams from My Father is about Obama's family, his childhood, and how he got his start in community organizing in Chicago.Some of my favorite stories were about Barack's grandparents, his memories of his mother and father, and finally, his visit to Kenya to meet his African relatives. It was interesting to read this memoir, first published in 1995, and to recognize all that Obama has accomplished since writing it. The audio f...

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 withi...

It would be silly for me to attempt an in-depth discussion of this book. I am a huge Obama fan. He can read the phonebook and would have me at A. This book delves into the development of Obama's character and point of view. It was fascinating and what a life. I found the book deeply personal, profound, and frankly delightful. His mother looms large in his character development as do his maternal grandparents. The ghosts of his father and his journey towards finding and understanding him was also...

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 time...

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...

Even if Obama weren't about to become President, this would be quite a worthwhile book. I wasn't crazy about his style, but he has a lot of interesting things to say, and comes across as a very sympathetic person.

Have you ever read a book that just made you flat out mad? Well the book “ Dreams of my Father ” by Barack Obama is one those books. This book lacks common sense that ever book should have. It pays so much attention to characters that do not deserve the time of day. Barack makes his life sound unbearable when in reality his life is really easy.First, I feel that Obama is making too much fuss over whether he is white or black. As an interracial child that I am, I feel that all you should know wha...

I started reading this a day after Obama's inauguration. Even though I'm not American, it seemed important to do so, and also I was told that the quality of the writing is at least as impressive and the story.It was published in 1995, shortly after Obama graduated from Harvard Law School and covers his life, or rather his search for identity up till then, in three main sections: childhood in Hawaii, Indonesia and back in Hawaii; working in Chicago and visiting Kenya to visit his father's family....

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 me ponder how ch...