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

I was lent this earlier Obama book written around 1995. Re-published with greater success in 2004 once his name was better known.

An interesting read of his family background and the stages in his life where he found out more about his family history. The book divides into the places in America he lived and ends on a trip back his roots in Kenya.

The book centres arounds his search for a better idea of who his father was - having only met him once. It turns out he was a complex character who had gone to America to study, married a white American and subsequently returned home. The complexity seemed to stem from a grandfather who was playing both sides of the tribal and colonial influences on Kenya.

Beyond this the book is an interesting read on Africa, how the west has affected it - the friction of colonial rule (for example inventing taxes that forced the tribal people to work for the white man so that he could pay them).

Overall it reassured me more that this man is now president, someone with some real world experience and clearly a deep thinker on issues outside of America.