Obama's books

I am an avowed fan of Barack Obama. So, naturally my review of his books is going to be fulsome in praise and generous in applause. But it is not just sheer admiration of his persona that has endeared me towards the books, but also the content and context of the books, which are relevant to the core of the world.

‘Dreams From My Father’ is a beautiful narrative of an estranged child about the what-would and could-be life with his father. Barack was separated from his African father, after his parents’ divorce. He had remembrance though of a few odd years which he spent with his father during childhood. He built upon those memories to gather perspective of his growing as a black child among white neighbourhood, his teenage restlessness, his social work in the Black Colonies in Chicago and then his enrollment for Law Course in the Harvard. His life was as ordinary, or rather say, associative as a you-and-me on the street. The same youth’s wonders and wows, infractions and intransigence, love and hate….How could Barack rose unique then? Because of his belief and perspective. And he attributes in no less measure, the development of this perspective, to his unanswered wonderings about his father’s role in his life.

‘Audacity of Hope’ on the other hand is a much general outlook of world in general and US in particular. It does give an indication of the erudition and grasp of Barack’s ideas on the everyday life’s nerves. He speaks in tone of a commoner- why right is right, and wrong is wrong. Why US hasn’t followed the ideals it cherishes so proudly; why questions of race, religion, colour still mar their country’s achievements; why US stands on a precipice of descent into days of backpedalling; and why world needs a unified view with focus on individual country’s development. Afghanistan and Iraq’s wars are spoken in terms of righteousness, coming from a Senator’s mouth in its most veracious tenor. He paints a grim world, but he also lights the flicker of hope, and that was what catapulted him to people’s imagination and Presidency of United States.

Obama’s books are thus in a way or two a symposium of a commoner’s view, desires and achievements in this world. They lay the personal and professional ladders, for the view of everyone, and for every aspiring soul to climb. They are, in a nutshell, a dreamer’s delight. Obama’s books …. I heard someone say.