The Other Barack

The Other Barack
Author: Sally H Jacobs
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2011-07-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1610390199

Barack Obama Sr., father of the American president, was part of Africa's "independence generation" and in 1959 it seemed his star would shine brightly. He came to the U.S. from Kenya and was given a university scholarship. While in the Hawaii, he met Ann Dunham in 1961, and his son Barack was born. He left his young family to gain a master's degree from Harvard. After that, Obama's life became progressively more complicated. He was a brilliant economist, yet never held the coveted government job he felt should have been his. He was a polygamist, an alcoholic, and an ardent African nationalist unafraid to tell truth to power at a time when that could get you killed. Father of eight, nurturer of none, he was an unlikely person to father the first African American president of the United States. Yet he was, like that son, a man moved by the dream of a better world. Now, thanks to dozens of exclusive new interviews, prodigious research, and determined investigation, Sally Jacobs tells his full story.

Barack Obama Sr.

Barack Obama Sr.
Author: Abon’go Malik Obama & Frank Koyoo
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2012-05-30
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 146918463X

I have tried to tell the story of my father, our father, as best as I can with the distinguished assistance of my co-author, Frank Koyoo. Frank came to me with this idea and revealed that he had begun to do a story about my father Barack Hussein Obama. He wanted to write this book, but he did not feel that he was the right person to do it. He knew that his story’s subjects were alive, and he proceeded to seek out the one who would have the best and most knowledgeable information about the man. He came to me, and although I, at first, was hesitant and uncertain about his intentions and the project in general, I realized that this was a real opportunity to tell our father’s story, an authentic account from an authentic source. We have tried to do our best in telling the story of a man who started out from the heart of the African bushland, traveled to heart of the great American continent, and achieved the highest in intellectual accomplishments, returning to his native Africa, of which he had the highest esteem. His dream was to restore Africa to its historical greatness, to establish and build a new and better place for his people. His goal was for a place where his children and the children of his people lived in a land of plenty in peace, love, and harmony. His passion was education, honesty, and perfection. He had lofty ideals and was generous and kind. He had his shortcomings as is natural for all of us. This is his story; some of it is factual, some of it as close to factual as could be, and others made to most closely fit into the general picture of Luoland, Kenya, and Luo culture. Things did not turn out as he had planned, and life was great at one time and at the lowest at others, but he kept on until he met his death at the young age of forty-six on 26 November 1982. His life was cut short when he was getting back on his feet. There was talk about the circumstances of my father’s death. It was difficult to accept that he had died. There was talk that he had been in the company of friends, the identity of whom is still a mystery, and had received some large sums of cash, the whereabouts of which no one has ever been able to determine, a classic conspiracy theory that may have some truth to it because my father was pulling himself together and was getting back on his feet. Somebody somewhere was bound to be threatened and could have had a hand in his death. Barack Hussein Obama; son of Akumu Nyanjoga (daughter of Njoga). Years have turned over, and memories have dimmed in some places, but all in all, we have done our best and hope that justice has been done and that you, our readers, find this material excellent to read and to your approval. We hope that wherever he is, he can look back and through us feel vindicated. He did his bit, and now he can look at us and heave a sigh of relief, knowing that we are doing well. Rest in peace, Dad; we love you.

Dreams from My Father

Dreams from My Father
Author: Barack Obama
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 463
Release: 2007-01-09
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0307394123

#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 Singular Woman

A Singular Woman
Author: Janny Scott
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2011-05-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 110151390X

From the author of The Beneficiary: Fortune, Misfortune and the Story of My Father comes a major publishing event: an unprecedented look into the life of the woman who most singularly shaped Barack Obama-his mother. Barack Obama has written extensively about his father, but little is known about Stanley Ann Dunham, the fiercely independent woman who raised him, the person he credits for, as he says, "what is best in me." Here is the missing piece of the story. Award-winning reporter Janny Scott interviewed nearly two hundred of Dunham's friends, colleagues, and relatives (including both her children), and combed through boxes of personal and professional papers, letters to friends, and photo albums, to uncover the full breadth of this woman's inspiring and untraditional life, and to show the remarkable extent to which she shaped the man Obama is today. Dunham's story moves from Kansas and Washington state to Hawaii and Indonesia. It begins in a time when interracial marriage was still a felony in much of the United States, and culminates in the present, with her son as our president- something she never got to see. It is a poignant look at how character is passed from parent to child, and offers insight into how Obama's destiny was created early, by his mother's extraordinary faith in his gifts, and by her unconventional mothering. Finally, it is a heartbreaking story of a woman who died at age fifty-two, before her son would go on to his greatest accomplishments and reflections of what she taught him.

Airlift to America

Airlift to America
Author: Tom Shachtman
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2009-09-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1429960906

This is the long-hidden saga of how a handful of Americans and East Africans fought the British colonial government, the U.S. State Department, and segregation to transport to, or support at, U.S. and Canadian universities, between 1959 and 1963, nearly 800 young East African men and women who would go on to change their world and ours. The students supported included Barack Obama Sr., future father of a U.S. president, Wangari Maathai, future Nobel Peace Prize laureate, as well as the nation-builders of post-colonial East Africa -- cabinet ministers, ambassadors, university chancellors, clinic and school founders. The airlift was conceived by the unusual partnership of the charismatic, later-assassinated Kenyan Tom Mboya and William X. Scheinman, a young American entrepreneur, with supporting roles played by Jackie Robinson, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The airlift even had an impact on the 1960 presidential race, as Vice-President Richard Nixon tried to muscle the State Department into funding the project to prevent Senator Jack Kennedy from using his family foundation to do so and reaping the political benefit. The book is based on the files of the airlift's sponsor, the African American Students Foundation, untouched for almost fifty years.

Barack Obama

Barack Obama
Author: David Maraniss
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 773
Release: 2012-06-19
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1439167532

The groundbreaking multigenerational biography, a richly textured account of President Obama and the forces that shaped him and sustain him, from Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter, political commentator, and acclaimed biographer David Maraniss. In Barack Obama: The Story, David Maraniss has written a deeply reported generational biography teeming with fresh insights and revealing information, a masterly narrative drawn from hundreds of interviews, including with President Obama in the Oval Office, and a trove of letters, journals, diaries, and other documents. The book unfolds in the small towns of Kansas and the remote villages of western Kenya, following the personal struggles of Obama’s white and black ancestors through the swirl of the twentieth century. It is a roots story on a global scale, a saga of constant movement, frustration and accomplishment, strong women and weak men, hopes lost and deferred, people leaving and being left. Disparate family threads converge in the climactic chapters as Obama reaches adulthood and travels from Honolulu to Los Angeles to New York to Chicago, trying to make sense of his past, establish his own identity, and prepare for his political future. Barack Obama: The Story chronicles as never before the forces that shaped the first black president of the United States and explains why he thinks and acts as he does. Much like the author’s classic study of Bill Clinton, First in His Class, this promises to become a seminal book that will redefine a president.

Barack Obama's Family Tree

Barack Obama's Family Tree
Author: Amelie von Zumbusch
Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
Total Pages: 26
Release: 2010-01-15
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1435893905

Surveys President Obama's family background, including his American grandparents and mother and his Kenyan father and extended family.

And Then Life Happens

And Then Life Happens
Author: Auma Obama
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2012-04-24
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1250010594

A moving account by Auma Obama about her life in Africa and Europe, and her relationship with her brother, Barack Obama. While her younger brother Barack grew up in the U.S. and Indonesia, Auma Obama's childhood played out at the other end of the world in a remote village in Kenya, the birthplace of the siblings' shared father. Barack and Auma met for the first time in the 1980s, and they built a lasting relationship which lead to travels together in Kenya, research into their family history and finally Auma's support for her brother's political career and eventual bid for the U.S. presidency. Auma spent sixteen years studying and living in Germany, moved to England for love, and gave birth to a daughter there. The tension between her original and chosen worlds and cultures was a constant challenge, and eventually Auma returned to Africa and worked to support young men and women in shaping their futures. In And Then Life Happens, her candid and emotional memoir, Auma shares her own story as well as recollections of and experiences with her famous brother, who says about their first encounter: "I hugged her, we looked at each other, and laughed. I knew right then that I loved her."

An Obama's Journey

An Obama's Journey
Author: Mark Obama Ndesandjo
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2014-09-29
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1493013912

In this revealing and beautifully written memoir, Mark Obama Ndesandjo, recounts his complex relationship with his older half-brother, President Barack Obama, including their first meeting in Kenya over twenty years ago. The book also offers the author's inspiring personal story about identity and multiculturalism. Rare family photos add to the book's personal nature as does the intense recounting of domestic violence in the home of Barack Obama Sr.’s and his third wife, Ruth Baker, Mark’s Jewish-American mother. The book also attempts to set the records straight on several points of the president’s best-selling memoir Dreams from My Father. In its connection to President Obama, Mark's story takes on an even greater significance because it becomes all the more directly, a story of American identity and a window into the complex figure of the father they share, Barack Obama Sr., their roots in Kenya, their multicultural identities, and their relationships with America.

Renegades

Renegades
Author: Barack Obama
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2021-10-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0593236327

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Two longtime friends share an intimate and urgent conversation about life, music, and their enduring love of America, with all its challenges and contradictions, in this stunningly produced expansion of their groundbreaking Higher Ground podcast, featuring more than 350 photographs, exclusive bonus content, and never-before-seen archival material. Renegades: Born in the USA is a candid, revealing, and entertaining dialogue between President Barack Obama and legendary musician Bruce Springsteen that explores everything from their origin stories and career-defining moments to our country’s polarized politics and the growing distance between the American Dream and the American reality. Filled with full-color photographs and rare archival material, it is a compelling and beautifully illustrated portrait of two outsiders—one Black and one white—looking for a way to connect their unconventional searches for meaning, identity, and community with the American story itself. It includes: • Original introductions by President Obama and Bruce Springsteen • Exclusive new material from the Renegades podcast recording sessions • Obama’s never-before-seen annotated speeches, including his “Remarks at the 50th Anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery Marches” • Springsteen’s handwritten lyrics for songs spanning his 50-year-long career • Rare and exclusive photographs from the authors’ personal archives • Historical photographs and documents that provide rich visual context for their conversation In a recording studio stocked with dozens of guitars, and on at least one Corvette ride, Obama and Springsteen discuss marriage and fatherhood, race and masculinity, the lure of the open road and the call back to home. They also compare notes on their favorite protest songs, the most inspiring American heroes of all time, and more. Along the way, they reveal their passion for—and the occasional toll of—telling a bigger, truer story about America throughout their careers, and explore how our fractured country might begin to find its way back toward unity and global leadership.