Critical Essays On Barack Obama

This collection of critical essays explores the life and writings of President Barack Obama. The individual essays, written by a diverse body of scholars, examine specific facets of Obama’s career – from personal, communal, national and international reactions to his presidential election; to his controversial contributions to the global conversation about race; his impact on popular culture and race relations; his literary, political and philosophical visions; his attitude toward the American constitution; his enactment of new legislation; to the manner in which he attempts to influence American public policy; and to the implications his presidency holds for Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. Ranging far beyond the presentation of personal opinions about the Obama Administration, these essays offer scholarly perspectives on Obama’s two books, and on his multidimensional efforts to remove the obstacles to equality of opportunity in the United States. They also explore Obama’s potential for re-shaping the American social and cultural terrain and, by extension, for re-vitalizing the American Dream. This book should be of interest to scholars of political science, literature, history, philosophy, religion and psycho-culture as well as to the general reading public.

Written 15 years before his rise to the presidency, Barack Obama's 1994 'Dreams from My Father' is an important literary and cultural contribution to the national conversation. This book examines significant aspects of the text both in relation to the African American literary tradition and to the context of the relevant historical and cultural productions that inform it.

In the early twenty-first century, race still occupies a dominant role in American politics. Despite this truism, presidential candidate Barack Obama was uniquely poised to transcend both race and party as the first African American to have a realistic chance of winning the presidency. Previous contenders running in the traditional mode of the Civil Rights Movement based their appeal primarily on African American voters. Obama, on the other hand, ran a deracialized campaign in an effort to appeal to voters of different backgrounds and political parties. Clayton examines how race in American politics has changed over time and offers an explanation for why Obama’s candidacy offers a different roadmap for the future. The Presidential Campaign of Barack Obama provides students of politics, inside and outside of the classroom, a unique opportunity to explore the institutional and structural challenges an African American faces in becoming the president of the United States. This guide to major issues in Black politics and the ins and outs of the 2008 campaign provides the necessary contours for understanding how the highest elected African American official won office.

Edited by internationally recognised scholar Femi Ojo-Ade, this volume brings together a mixture of young intellectuals and seasoned scholars from Africa and its diaspora to address various implications of the Obama phenomenon, all from an Afro-oriented perspective. Far from being a neologism coined from what some would dismiss as Obama's political jingoism, The Obama Phenomenon: Change We Can is an affirmation of potential power, a call-out to people of all races and cultures to work together for the just cause of human progress.

New York Times Bestseller Rising Star is the definitive account of Barack Obama's formative years that made him the man who became the forty-fourth president of the United States—from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Bearing the Cross Barack Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention instantly catapulted him into the national spotlight and led to his election four years later as America's first African-American president. In this penetrating biography, David J. Garrow delivers an epic work about the life of Barack Obama, creating a rich tapestry of a life little understood, until now. Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama captivatingly describes Barack Obama's tumultuous upbringing as a young black man attending an almost-all-white, elite private school in Honolulu while being raised almost exclusively by his white grandparents. After recounting Obama's college years in California and New York, Garrow charts Obama's time as a Chicago community organizer, working in some of the city's roughest neighborhoods; his years at the top of his Harvard Law School class; and his return to Chicago, where Obama honed his skills as a hard-knuckled politician, first in the state legislature and then as a candidate for the United States Senate. Detailing a scintillating, behind-the-scenes account of Obama's 2004 speech, a moment that labeled him the Democratic Party's "rising star," Garrow also chronicles Obama's four years in the Senate, weighing his stands on various issues against positions he had taken years earlier, and recounts his thrilling run for the White House in 2008. In Rising Star, David J. Garrow has created a vivid portrait that reveals not only the people and forces that shaped the future president but also the ways in which he used those influences to serve his larger aspirations. This is a gripping read about a young man born into uncommon family circumstances, whose faith in his own talents came face-to-face with fantastic ambitions and a desire to do good in the world. Most important, Rising Star is an extraordinary work of biography—tremendous in its research and storytelling, and brilliant in its analysis of the all-too-human struggles of one of the most fascinating politicians of our time.

The Case Against Barack Obama by National Review's David Freddoso blasts Obama for failing to take on the Chicago machine, for listening to "radical advisors," and for backing "doctrinaire liberal" causes from teachers unions to abortion rights. It does not, however, compare him to Paris Hilton, or dwell at length on his religion or race - making the substance of The Case Against Barack Obama sound unfamiliar amid a campaign cacophony of hyperbolic web ads, alleged race cards, and viral smears.Freddoso says John McCain's campaign and Republicans at large are making the wrong case against the Illinois senator. You don't beat him by comparing him to Paris Hilton, as McCain's latest advertising campaign did; the more important thing is really to look at who he is. Is he really a great reformer? Or just another liberal?

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • ONE OF ESSENCE’S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS In this iconic memoir of his early days, Barack Obama “guides us straight to the intersection of the most serious questions of identity, class, and race” (The Washington Post Book World). “Quite extraordinary.”—Toni Morrison In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father—a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man—has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey—first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance. Praise for Dreams from My Father “Beautifully crafted . . . moving and candid . . . This book belongs on the shelf beside works like James McBride’s The Color of Water and Gregory Howard Williams’s Life on the Color Line as a tale of living astride America’s racial categories.”—Scott Turow “Provocative . . . Persuasively describes the phenomenon of belonging to two different worlds, and thus belonging to neither.”—The New York Times Book Review “Obama’s writing is incisive yet forgiving. This is a book worth savoring.”—Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here “One of the most powerful books of self-discovery I’ve ever read, all the more so for its illuminating insights into the problems not only of race, class, and color, but of culture and ethnicity. It is also beautifully written, skillfully layered, and paced like a good novel.”—Charlayne Hunter-Gault, author of In My Place “Dreams from My Father is an exquisite, sensitive study of this wonderful young author’s journey into adulthood, his search for community and his place in it, his quest for an understanding of his roots, and his discovery of the poetry of human life. Perceptive and wise, this book will tell you something about yourself whether you are black or white.”—Marian Wright Edelman

A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making—from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAACP IMAGE AWARD NOMINEE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND PEOPLE NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times • NPR • The Guardian • Slate • Vox • The Economist • Marie Claire In the stirring first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil. Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation’s highest office. Reflecting on the presidency, he offers a unique and thoughtful exploration of both the awesome reach and the limits of presidential power, as well as singular insights into the dynamics of U.S. partisan politics and international diplomacy. Obama brings readers inside the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room, and to Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, and points beyond. We are privy to his thoughts as he assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with generals about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, tackles Wall Street reform, responds to the devastating Deepwater Horizon blowout, and authorizes Operation Neptune’s Spear, which leads to the death of Osama bin Laden. A Promised Land is extraordinarily intimate and introspective—the story of one man’s bet with history, the faith of a community organizer tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages of “hope and change,” and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making. He is frank about the forces that opposed him at home and abroad, open about how living in the White House affected his wife and daughters, and unafraid to reveal self-doubt and disappointment. Yet he never wavers from his belief that inside the great, ongoing American experiment, progress is always possible. This beautifully written and powerful book captures Barack Obama’s conviction that democracy is not a gift from on high but something founded on empathy and common understanding and built together, day by day.