Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

"Dreams from my Father" is a depressing, disturbing work, one that presents a bleak and hopeless vision of America's future. Barack Obama's memoir hinges on the premise that defeating racism depends upon white people understanding black people, and that white people can never understand black people. If that's true, we as Americans are doomed to never having any sense of brotherhood or common cultural ground that crosses the racial divide, and we might as well acknowledge that blacks are all filled with rage and have highly justified reasons for despising whites. Another point Obama takes pains to underline is that biracial/multicultural identity does not exist, and people who have mixed-race ancestry are angry, miserable and emotionally messed up because of their forebears' decision to intermarry. Buying into Obama's segregationist policies means that every black/biracial person I have ever met has treated me with calculated deceit. I refuse to believe that. Therefore, I reject his philosophy. Barack Obama is not a person I can relate to on any level. He's a complete narcissist, and reading some passages was an uncomfortable experience (like watching someone pleasure himself while gazing into a mirror). I do wonder if he remains at this level of an angst-ridden adolescent. This book came out when he was an adult (note: I read the edition which came out after his election to the senate, but the manuscript was published a few years prior to that, after he and Michele married) so it's entirely possible he's in some state of arrested development. Obama traces his life from childhood in Hawaii through his college years and eventually to his visit to Africa. Obama's mother was an unstable, flighty girl who, as a college kid in Hawaii, hauled home an African classmate. Barack Senior had a wife and kids back home in Kenya, but that didn't stop him from impregnating Barack's mom, and then committing bigamy by marrying her. Her white Midwestern parents (her dad had a weird fixation with black people and seeks out their company all his life) embraced their new son-in-law, although Obama pere is revealed to be an alcoholic philanderer who was officious, abusive and delusional, and who ultimately abandoned his American wife and little Barry. (The dad's multiple marriages in Africa overlap, and he discards families like expired produce--it's very sad and confusing.) Obama has described his maternal grandmother as racist, and he includes a passage where, close to retirement but still working to pay his tuition, she is menaced by a black street person while waiting for a bus. Her husband and her grandson Barack react with outrage. But not at the guy threatening her. At HER--for mentioning that the man who harassed her was black. In fact, his mom and her parents worked diligently to expose him to heroes of the Civil Rights movement, and they idealized his African heritage. I think that's why Obama resents white people. He lived with whites and saw them as "real" people, while blacks were elevated to a superhuman status. Unfortunately, maturity never brought the insight that people are people. Mom took him to Indonesia for her marriage #2, and this prevented him from becoming "a boorish American." (Oh, really? Just one among many slams against the United States. I am surprised he wants to live in, much less run, this country.) He soon returns to the only stability he knows-- his doting grandparents who struggle to provide a middle-class upbringing and the opportunity to attend an exclusive private school. Bad call: he's spoiled and talks about envying rich classmates. He fights, he parties. He wallows in his perceived status as an outsider. Later, as a college student, he drinks heavily, smokes pot and snorts coke. (But never, he is proud to point out, tries heroin.) You may say, "Well, everyone that age experiments a little!" but there's a difference between that and being a burnout. He's eventually radicalized, and although he takes a job at a law firm (he calls this "working for the enemy"), he quits with some vague idea of becoming an activist. On the South Side of Chicago he becomes a community organizer. Then the story gets really sketchy. Obama lived at my former (now closed) parish. He never mentions this, and he is derisive of the priests who were actually doing community service. Natch: they're white and therefore can't relate to black people. He implies that he's nobly toiling alone for the Greater Good, when in fact he was supported by the very people he dismisses. Frankly, despite moving in the same circles for several years, living in the same neighborhood and volunteering for some of the same social outreach programs, I never once heard his name mentioned. He made no impact--he even admits this when he returns to the neighborhood after grad school. But his disloyalty doesn't end with his treatment of his grandparents, his mentors, and his nation, it extends to Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Wright welcomes him into his church, provides spiritual grounding, and eventually marries Obama and his wife. Obama speaks glowingly of Wright in this book...but the book was written when Wright was USEFUL to Obama. A few years later, after some of Wright's more controversial statements were publicized, Obama does what he does best and throws Wright under the bus, too. Obama devotes a section of the book to his pilgrimage to Kenya, where he meets dad's side of the family. Kenya, as we know, is no stranger to ethnic violence that often claims lives around election time, and it's not black-vs.-white--it's Luo vs. Bantu vs. Masai vs. Kikuyu. Of course, until the European colonialists arrived, the Luo lived a utopic existence marred only by forced abductions, female circumcision, and wife beatings. We have to overlook the fact that East Africa was first invaded by Arab slave traders who forced many of the tribes to accept Islam, or that the dastardly European colonialists also worked to illegalize slavery. That doesn't fit with the narrative. But African life is no cakewalk. Obama describes endemic poverty, illiteracy, rampant corruption and poor health care. His male relatives seem singularly self-absorbed, while the long-suffering women appear more stable. Obama learns that his grandfather tried Christianity for awhile, but "could not understand such concepts as mercy toward one's enemies, so he converted to Islam." Needless to say, Barack's visit abroad engenders no appreciation of the U.S., although he ultimately returns. Obama never cogently explains why he decided to go into public service or how he expects to accomplish his (ill-defined) goals. Someone once described him as "an empty suit." The author of this book certainly fits that bill. Obama's presidency was lauded by many as heralding a post-racist society, but the man who wrote this book hasn't, and will probably never, transcend the simplistic and demeaning ethnic limitations he invests in. There has been an ongoing controversy over whether Obama wrote this memoir or if it was written by his pal Bill Ayers. It is similar enough in style to Ayers's "Days of Rage" that this is certainly a plausible theory. But Obama, again, displays an astounding disloyalty to another person who made him who he is today. Either Ayers wrote the book, heavily edited (re-wrote) it, or inspired it. No matter which, it is ungentlemanly behavior to not credit Ayers at all. Nevertheless, "Dreams" is regarded as a book that represents Obama. All voting Americans should read it. We should have read it before the last election, and we should have all paid attention to its cynical and self-serving message.