Dreams from my Father

I have just finished Dreams from my father by Barack Obama. Being cheap, I borrowed it as a library book and after some searching, managed to procure a paperback, taped on both front and back covers. A bildungsroman of an individual who has a racially mixed background who looks for his African ancestors and discovered and in fact met some of them. He also played basketball and did some politicking in Chicago with American born African Americans. Like many people of mixed ancestry, he got to see the strengths as well as the disappointments of his peoples. A dilettante of people but not a true member of any group. The description of his life in Indonesia is also interesting and describes some of his childhood.

If he was an obscure senator in Illinois, this book might have become the darling of the academics and been assigned in high schools and colleges nationwide but because he is now our president, he can't be assigned without it looking overly political. It is a good book. Someone who wrote a decent book is now our president. That's really scary. Americans prefer B students who are well liked for their presidents.