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Title: The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
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Manufacturer: Crown
List Price: $25.00
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| The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream by Crown The Audacity of Hope | | The book was great; Obama is very intelligent and has a lot of great ideas. He comes across as very honest and of high integrity, plus sensitve and altruistic. I very much enjoyed the book. | | The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream by Crown The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama | The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
The right to vote is to be taken seriously and the election process of 2008 is and remains difficult for most of us. For me, basic questions are:
1. What qualities do I look for in a person to lead the United States?
2. Where do the people running for office come from?
3. When did these candidates do something memorable that would inspire my vote?
4. Why would I vote for any of the candidates running for office?
5. Who are the candidates?
6. How do these candidates plan to lead during the next four or eight years?
Hillary Clinton is a known quantity. We have seen her in action for eight years while she was in the White House. John McCain is another person that we are familiar with, but to answer these basic questions about Barack Obama, I decided to read two of his books: "Dreams from my father, a story of race and inheritance" and "The Audacity of Hope."
Through Dreams of my father we are introduced to a man raised by his mother, a white woman from Kansas who married a young African man from Kenya. The marriage takes place while they lived in Hawaii.
Barack Obama surfaces as a person who struggles to understand the separate worlds that shaped his personality and in a search for identity he travels to Chicago and gets a job working as a community organizer. His full journey to discovery is completed when he travels to Kenya where he meets his African relatives, including his brothers and sisters, and becomes aware of the truth about his father's life.
Now, The Audacity of Hope presents the mature man, graduated from Harvard, accomplished, a best selling author, who through this work shares his views of the political arena and criticizes partisanship divisiveness, in particular Republicans.
What are his values? He is concerned about big government, but works as a Senator, therefore, he is part of our big government. His religious values are rather contradictory for he is in favor of a woman's right to an abortion and yet, he respects those who are in favor of protecting life at all costs. Throughout the readings I get the impression that he is agnostic or at least questions why "he has never seen angels coming down from heaven."
Did I read a clear map to what he calls a time for "change?" NO, am I confused? Yes, why does he say that we live in the best country in the world and yet we need to change? I completely agree with Obama when he says that an education is the key to improving future generations.
Does the book reveal qualities befitting the next leader of the USA? Has he done something memorable and worthy? Does his past provide the courage to lead those that are different and have not lived his experiences? Will Obama be able to lead our nation through these troubled times? In all fairness, read the books and make your own assessment, let's hope that we do vote for the right person to lead us through these troubled times.
| | The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream by Crown Audacity of Hope Review | Anyone planning to vote (as everyone eligible to do should), should read this book. Of the three candidates, Senator Obama comes the closest to helping our country fulfill the many dreams some of us had during the 60's...without the drugs! A thoroughly enlightening book that helped me cut through the political "crap" and spin put out by politicians...and I am so glad that Senator Obama is not in that mold.
I have voted Republican for the last 15 years and will now vote Democrat, if Obama is their candidate.... | | The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream by Crown Good but by no means great | Overall, it was a good read. Obama is quite articulate and not too long-winded. The title "The Audacity of Hope" just about sums up the whole book.
He promotes what he calls "a new kind of politics". I applaud this aspiration, but I cannot help but question its plausibility. Throughout the book, you will come across Obama as the nice guy who tries to please everyone, who never disagrees with anything completely and who always seems desperate to be politically correct regardless of the issue in discussion. Now, it is always good to try to be sympathetic to all points of view, but ultimately a politician has to make decisions. A politician considers all the available facts, weighs all the opinions being offered from all sides, pays close attention to his own thoughts and chooses. Maybe it's because he's trying to please everyone too much, but I sometimes got the feeling that I do not clearly understand his standings on certain issues.
I give him credit for providing his opinions, but I do not think the solutions he suggests are very original. I'm sure we've all heard those countless times before. He's a very charismatic and thoughtful young man and he'd definitely make a better president than John McCain. But as of now, Hillary still has my vote. | | The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream by Crown more politically moderate than I would have guessed | I loved Obama before I even read the book, so my review is probably already a little biased. Obama is a deep thinker and from the book it is obvious that he has spent a great deal of time pondering the problems facing our country.
Ironically I was probably more left-leaning before I read the book and Obama's take on things actually propelled me more toward the political center. He explains the rational and motives and hopes and dreams of both the left and the right and how really the value systems aren't all that different. Just one side tends to emphasize one set of values over the other. The real task is then to not be dogmatic about our political ideology but instead use judgement to navigate the complex trade-off that exist in each situation. Obama gives plenty of examples of this, and he makes me proud to be American where discussion like this is taking place and people really are working toward a better world. | | The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream by Crown Product Description | “A government that truly represents these Americans–that truly serves these Americans–will require a different kind of politics. That politics will need to reflect our lives as they are actually lived. It won’t be pre-packaged, ready to pull off the shelf. It will have to be constructed from the best of our traditions and will have to account for the darker aspects of our past. We will need to understand just how we got to this place, this land of warring factions and tribal hatreds. And we’ll need to remind ourselves, despite all our differences, just how much we share: common hopes, common dreams, a bond that will not break.”
–from The Audacity of Hope
In July 2004, Barack Obama electrified the Democratic National Convention with an address that spoke to Americans across the political spectrum. One phrase in particular anchored itself in listeners’ minds, a reminder that for all the discord and struggle to be found in our history as a nation, we have always been guided by a dogged optimism in the future, or what Senator Obama called “the audacity of hope.”
Now, in The Audacity of Hope, Senator Obama calls for a different brand of politics–a politics for those weary of bitter partisanship and alienated by the “endless clash of armies” we see in congress and on the campaign trail; a politics rooted in the faith, inclusiveness, and nobility of spirit at the heart of “our improbable experiment in democracy.” He explores those forces–from the fear of losing to the perpetual need to raise money to the power of the media–that can stifle even the best-intentioned politician. He also writes, with surprising intimacy and self-deprecating humor, about settling in as a senator, seeking to balance the demands of public service and family life, and his own deepening religious commitment.
At the heart of this book is Senator Obama’s vision of how we can move beyond our divisions to tackle concrete problems. He examines the growing economic insecurity of American families, the racial and religious tensions within the body politic, and the transnational threats–from terrorism to pandemic–that gather beyond our shores. And he grapples with the role that faith plays in a democracy–where it is vital and where it must never intrude. Underlying his stories about family, friends, members of the Senate, even the president, is a vigorous search for connection: the foundation for a radically hopeful political consensus.
A senator and a lawyer, a professor and a father, a Christian and a skeptic, and above all a student of history and human nature, Senator Obama has written a book of transforming power. Only by returning to the principles that gave birth to our Constitution, he says, can Americans repair a political process that is broken, and restore to working order a government that has fallen dangerously out of touch with millions of ordinary Americans. Those Americans are out there, he writes–“waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them.” | | The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream by Crown Amazon.com | Barack Obama's first book, Dreams from My Father, was a compelling and moving memoir focusing on personal issues of race, identity, and community. With his second book The Audacity of Hope, Obama engages themes raised in his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, shares personal views on faith and values and offers a vision of the future that involves repairing a "political process that is broken" and restoring a government that has fallen out of touch with the people. We had the opportunity to ask Senator Obama a few questions about writing, reading, and politics--see his responses below. --Daphne Durham
20 Second Interview: A Few Words with Barack Obama
 Q: How did writing a book that you knew would be read so closely by so many compare to writing your first book, when few people knew who you were?
A: In many ways, Dreams from My Father was harder to write. At that point, I wasn't even sure that I could write a book. And writing the first book really was a process of self-discovery, since it touched on my family and my childhood in a much more intimate way. On the other hand, writing The Audacity of Hope paralleled the work that I do every day--trying to give shape to all the issues that we face as a country, and providing my own personal stamp on them.
Q: What is your writing process like? You have such a busy schedule, how did you find time to write?
A: I'm a night owl, so I usually wrote at night after my Senate day was over, and after my family was asleep--from 9:30 p.m. or so until 1 a.m. I would work off an outline--certain themes or stories that I wanted to tell--and get them down in longhand on a yellow pad. Then I'd edit while typing in what I'd written.
Q: If readers are to come away from The Audacity of Hope with one action item (a New Year's Resolution for 2007, perhaps?), what should it be?
A: Get involved in an issue that you're passionate about. It almost doesn’t matter what it is--improving the school system, developing strategies to wean ourselves off foreign oil, expanding health care for kids. We give too much of our power away, to the professional politicians, to the lobbyists, to cynicism. And our democracy suffers as a result.
Q: You're known for being able to work with people across ideological lines. Is that possible in today's polarized Washington?
A: It is possible. There are a lot of well-meaning people in both political parties. Unfortunately, the political culture tends to emphasize conflict, the media emphasizes conflict, and the structure of our campaigns rewards the negative. I write about these obstacles in chapter 4 of my book, "Politics." When you focus on solving problems instead of scoring political points, and emphasize common sense over ideology, you'd be surprised what can be accomplished. It also helps if you're willing to give other people credit--something politicians have a hard time doing sometimes.
Q: How do you make people passionate about moderate and complex ideas?
A: I think the country recognizes that the challenges we face aren't amenable to sound-bite solutions. People are looking for serious solutions to complex problems. I don't think we need more moderation per se--I think we should be bolder in promoting universal health care, or dealing with global warming. We just need to understand that actually solving these problems won't be easy, and that whatever solutions we come up with will require consensus among groups with divergent interests. That means everybody has to listen, and everybody has to give a little. That's not easy to do.
Q: What has surprised you most about the way Washington works?
A: How little serious debate and deliberation takes place on the floor of the House or the Senate.
Q: You talk about how we have a personal responsibility to educate our children. What small thing can the average parent (or person) do to help improve the educational system in America? What small thing can make a big impact?
A: Nothing has a bigger impact than reading to children early in life. Obviously we all have a personal obligation to turn off the TV and read to our own children; but beyond that, participating in a literacy program, working with parents who themselves may have difficulty reading, helping their children with their literacy skills, can make a huge difference in a child's life.
Q: Do you ever find time to read? What kinds of books do you try to make time for? What is on your nightstand now?
A: Unfortunately, I had very little time to read while I was writing. I'm trying to make up for lost time now. My tastes are pretty eclectic. I just finished Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, a wonderful book. The language just shimmers. I've started Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, which is a great study of Lincoln as a political strategist. I read just about anything by Toni Morrison, E.L. Doctorow, or Philip Roth. And I've got a soft spot for John le Carre.
Q: What inspires you? How do you stay motivated?
A: I'm inspired by the people I meet in my travels--hearing their stories, seeing the hardships they overcome, their fundamental optimism and decency. I'm inspired by the love people have for their children. And I'm inspired by my own children, how full they make my heart. They make me want to work to make the world a little bit better. And they make me want to be a better man.
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