Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama

Before Barack Obama became a politician he was, among other things, a writer. Dreams from My Father, written long before his election as President, is a refreshing, revealing portrait of a young man asking the big questions about identity and belonging. The son of a black African father and a white American mother, Obama recounts an emotional odyssey. He retraces the migration of his mother's family from Kansas to Hawaii, then to his childhood home in Indonesia. Finally he travels to Kenya, where he confronts the bitter truth of his father's life and at last reconciles his divided inheritance. The book illuminates not only Obama’s journey but also our universal desire to understand our history, and what makes us the people that we are. A recommended introduction to the man who is about to become the forty-fourth President of the United States.