The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
by Barack Obama
from Crown
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 doesnÂ’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 RobinsonÂ’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.
“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.”
God Grew Tired of Us: A Memoir
by John Bul Dau
from National Geographic
"Lost Boy" John Bul Dau’s harrowing experience surviving the brutal horrors of Sudanese civil war and his adjustment to life in modern America is chronicled in this inspiring memoir and featured in an award-winning documentary film of the same name. Movingly written, the book traces Dau’s journey through hunger, exhaustion, terror, and violence as he fled his homeland, dodging ambushes, massacres and attacks by wild animals. His tortuous, 14-year journey began in 1987, when he was just 13, and took him on a 1,000-mile walk, barefoot, to Ethiopia, back to Sudan, then to a refugee camp in Kenya, where he lived with thousands of other Lost Boys. In 2001, at the age of 27, he immigrated to the United States. With touching humor, Dau recounts the shock of his tribal culture colliding with life in America. He shares the joy of reuniting with his family and the challenges of making a new life for himself while never forgetting the other Lost Boys he left behind.
PowerNomics : The National Plan to Empower Black America
by Dr. Claud Anderson
from Powernomics Corporation of America
PowerNomics: The National Plan to Empower Black America is a five-year plan to make Black America a prosperous and empowered race that is self-sufficient and competitive as a group by the year 2005. In this book, Dr. Anderson obliterates the myths and illusions of black progress and brings together data and information from many different sources to construct a framework for solutions to the dilemma of Black America. In PowerNomics: The National Plan, Dr. Anderson proposes new principles, strategies and concepts that show blacks a new way to see, think, and behave in race matters. The new mind set prepares blacks to take strategic steps to create a new reality for their race. It offers guidance to others who support blacks self-sufficiency. In this book, Dr. Anderson offers insightful analysis and action steps blacks can take to redesign core areas of life - Education, Economics, Politics and Religion - to better benefit their race. The action steps in each area require new empowerment tools that Dr. Anderson presents - a new group vision and a new culture of empowerment - tools designed to counter, if not break many of the racial monopolies in society. Vertical integration and Industrializing black communities are other major concepts and strategies that he presents in the book. He places a great deal of importance on building industries in black communities that are constructed upon group competitive advantages. A the same time he announced the release of PowerNomics: The National Plan, he also announced that he has established several models of the strategies he proposes in the book. PowerNomics: The Plan, is infused with Dr. Anderson's trademark creative thinking and answers questions such as: - Why are blacks the only group that equates success with working in a White corporation, government or the entertainment industry? - How did power and wealth - businesses, resources, privileges, income and control of all levels of government get so disproportionately distributed into the hands of White society?
- Industrialization brings many economic benefits to the geographic locations where it occurs. Why has Black America never been industrialized and how can it be done? - Why do visible blacks and black leaders avoid blackness, identifying the focus of their work instead for people of color, minorities, women, gays , the poor, Hispanics, and other immigrant groups? - What enables a constant stream of immigrant groups to politically, economically and socially dominate blacks? - In politics, how is it that blacks can be monolithic and loyal political supporters yet their group receives no quid pro quo benefits? - In his first book, Black Labor, White Wealth, Dr. Anderson examined history and showed how racism has locked and boxed blacks into a near permanent underclass. Picking up where Black Labor, White Wealth left off, PowerNomics: The National Plan is the missing link between the historical analysis of problems facing blacks and the strategies needed to correct those problems. Dr. Anderson's books are a phenomenon in the publishing industry. His work is distinguished because he has turned books that are serious, non-fiction, and heavy on black history, into best-sellers. PowerNomics: The National Plan continues that pattern. It is an astounding work.
Chez Jacques: Traditions and Rituals of a Cook
by Jacques Pepin
from Stewart, Tabori & Chang
Of the 20-plus cookbooks Jacques Pépin has written, Chez Jacques is his most personal and engaging. Now starring in his tenth PBS series, Pépin ranks among America’s most beloved cooking teachers, and this book shows us why.
The book’s 100 recipes—for soups and appetizers, main courses, side dishes, and desserts—are Pépin’s own favorites among the thousands he has created over a lifetime of cooking. Using readily available ingredients and relying upon familiar techniques, these are the dishes he makes when preparing food at his Connecticut home. But Chez Jacques is more than a collection of well-liked recipes; it’s also a captivating sentimental journey. Each dish is introduced by a recollection—of picking dandelion greens for a spring salad, of buying fresh eggs from the local farmer—that invites readers to share in the traditions and rituals of Pépin’s most intimate circle.
This treasury of great food, lore, and memory is exquisitely illustrated with a sampling of Pépin’s paintings, as well as hundreds of color photographs of the finished dishes and of Pépin in all his “natural habitats”—pitching boules with a group of friends, savoring a glass of chilled rosé in the afternoon sun, painting landscapes, designing menus, and, of course, working in his kitchen.
Jubilee: The Emergence of African-American Culture
by Howard Dodson
from National Geographic
Introduction by Winton Marsalis.
Slaves came to the Americas from many different parts of the African continent, bringing with them distinct languages, religions, and expressive arts. Jubilee shows the many ways that these diverse peoples united, forged their own identity, and laid the foundations for truly unique African-American social, cultural, political, and economic expressions throughout the Western Hemisphere.
Jubilee is written by Howard Dodson, chief of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture—one of the most prominent institutions of black scholarship in the world. Essays by leading voices in African-American history and literature, including Henry Louis Gates, Jr., John Hope Franklin, Amiri Bakara, Annette Gordon-Reed, and Gail Buckley will explore topics such as abolition and emancipation, changes in family life and social development, religion, and the evolution of language, literacy, and education through the end of Reconstruction. This illuminating text is surrounded by more than 200 stunning illustrations, culled from the Schomburg's collection of more than 5 million items. From slave ship manifests, manumission papers, and some of the earliest photographs of slaves to carved items that echo African sculpture and freedom quilts with African motifs, the book is richly illustrated in an interactive way that brings to life this crucial transition from slavery to freedom.
Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country: Traveling Through the Land of my Ancestors (Literary Travel)
by Louise Erdrich
from National Geographic
For more than twenty years Louise Erdrich has dazzled readers with the intricately wrought, deeply poetic novels which have won her a place among today's finest writers. Her nonfiction is equally eloquent, and this lovely memoir offers a vivid glimpse of the landscape, the people, and the long tradition of storytelling that give her work its magical, elemental force.
In a small boat like those her Native American ancestors have used for countless generations, she travels to Ojibwe home ground, the islands of Lake of the Woods in southern Ontario. Her only companions are her new baby and the baby's father, an Ojibwe spiritual leader, on a pilgrimage to the sacred rock paintings their people have venerated for centuries as mystical "teaching and dream guides," and where even today Ojibwe leave offerings of tobacco in token of their power. With these paintings as backdrop, Erdrich summons to life the Ojibwe's spirits and songs, their language and sorrows, and the tales that are in their blood, echoing through her own family's very contemporary American lives and shaping her vision of the wider world. Thoughtful, moving, and wonderfully well observed, her meditation evokes ancient wisdom, modern ways, and the universal human concerns we all share.
"This book is a treasure and a delight."—Minneapolis Star Tribune
Barack Obama: A Biography (Greenwood Biographies)
by Joann F. Price
from Greenwood Press
Barack Obama splashed onto the political scene with an inspirational, rousing speech at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. From that night on, Obamamania was very real. He is bold and audacious; his rhetoric fiery, convincing and very compelling. He encourages cross-over appeal, discourse, affiliation, and has drawn many Americans, including today's youth, into politics. This is the story of a man of mixed race heritage who inspires, listens, compromises, and is often bipartisan. With a charismatic smile and a cadre of "change we can believe in," many believe that he embodies the American dream. Thousands have turned out to hear the dynamic senator from Illinois speak as he campaigns to become the next President of the United States. Barack Obama says that his story could only take place in America, and this revealing biography traces the events of his remarkable life thus far. From his upbringing in humble circumstances in Hawaii and Indonesia to becoming the fifth African American senator in U.S. history, and later, a presidential candidate, this well-researched volume highlights the hardships and successes, the people who most influenced his career, his personal life, and his meteoric rise to pop icon status. Rounded out with photos, a timeline, a bibliography, and an index, this volume is a must-read for high school and undergraduate students of current events and political science.
How I Learned English: 55 Accomplished Latinos Recall Lessons in Language and Life
from National Geographic
All over the world there are people struggling to master the quirks and challenges of English. In today's America, many millions of them are Latino—and in this eloquent collection, nearly 60 of the best known contribute fascinating, revealing, often touching essays on the very personal process each went through to achieve this common end. Their successes are inspiring. Their pieces, engaging and entertaining all, express the whole range of emotions that learning any new language entails.
Congressman José Serrano, for example, describes learning English from Frank Sinatra records. Cuban-American author Oscar Hijuelos picked it up as a sick little boy in an American hospital bed. Many find it a daunting ordeal; for others English came easily. But from TV personality Cristina Saralegui to Hall of Fame baseball player Orlando Cepeda, every last one remembers what it felt like to do battle with bizarre idioms, irregular verbs, and all the other incomprehensible intricacies that tangle the tongue.
And of course, every new English-speaker has a tale to tell: an immigrant yearning to assimilate and achieve, or a political exile suddenly far from home and alone, or a child who just wants to fit in. Their fears and triumphs will resonate with everyone who has shared this exasperating, exhilarating experience, whether last year or a lifetime ago. This wonderful, eclectic, inviting collection speaks to—and for—all of them, and goes directly to the heart of the national debate on language and immigration.
Cleora's Kitchens: The Memoir of a Cook & Eight Decades of Great American Food
by Cleora Butler
from Council Oak Books
When Barbara Haber, curator of Radcliffe College's 4000-volume cookbook library, was asked by The Boston Globe to name her favorite book in that famous collection, she picked Cleora's Kitchens.
Starting with a freedman's wagon ride out of Texas, Cleora Butler takes us from the beaten biscuits of her childhood, baked in a wood-burning stove, to fricasseed quail she later prepared as a caterer. Rich with stories and turn-of-the-century recipes impossible to find - Cleora's Kitchens also provides a glimpse of changing twentieth-century tastes. More than 400 recipes are arranged by the decades in which she first cooked and served them, from grandpa's sausage in the early days to the first avocado anyone in Oklahoma had ever seen. Through stories, menus, and recipes, Cleora recreates the flavor of her own remarkable history - and ours.
When Barbara Haber, curator of Radcliffe College's 4000-volume cookbook library, was asked by The Boston Globe to name her favorite book in that famous collection, she picked Cleora's Kitchens by Cleora Butler. Why? "Because, " Ms. Haber said, "it expresses, through food, joy . . . you have the connection of food being celebratory in truly meaningful ways. Just wonderful stuff."
Starting with a freedman's wagon ride out of Texas, Cleora Butler takes us from the beaten biscuits of her childhood, baked in a wood-burning stove, to fricasseed quail she later prepared as a caterer. Rich with stories and turn-of-the-century recipes impossible to find -- possum grape wine, mother's hickory nut cake, hot water cornbread, and burnt sugar ice cream -- Cleora's Kitchens also provides a glimpse of changing twentieth-century tastes. More than 400 recipes are arranged by the decades in which she first cooked and served them, from grandpa's sausage in the early days to the first avocado anyone in Oklahoma had ever seen, to duckling pati and pine nut pilaf. Through stories, menus, and recipes, Cleora recreates the flavor of her own remarkable history -- and ours.
Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery and Booke of Sweetmeats
by Karen Hess
from Columbia University Press
This is the family cookbook Martha Washington kept and used for fifty years, with over five hundred classic recipes dating largely from Elizabethan and Jacobean times, the golden age of English cookery.
