The Audacity of Hope is Barack Obama s call for a new kind of politics—a politics that builds upon those shared understandings that pull us together as Americans. Lucid in his vision of America s place in the world, refreshingly candid about his family life and his time in the Senate, Obama here sets out his political convictions and inspires us to trust in the dogged optimism that has long defined us and that is our best hope going forward.

#Presidential (2008-11-23) An Enlightening insight into our new president. Agree or disagree, the throngs who claimed during his campaign that he offed no specifics simply needed to crack a book. Showcasing his unusual ability to fairly and accurately include other opinions in defining his own, Obama s comprehention of contrary philosophies shines forth in a distinguished and diplomatic prose. Well grounded in common sense, candor and hard work, Mr. Obama brings us into his world and his thought processes. One comes away with the distict feeling that even if you don t agree with th...

#The real Barack Obama? (2008-11-19) For anyone out there wondering who the real Barack Obama is, The Audacity of Hope will give you one clear idea. It is part memoir, part political manifesto, encompassing his comprehensive vision for America. The book reveals him to be very smart, well read, compassionate, and sometimes quite funny. I think few people reading the book will agree with him on every policy issue, and no one is really prepared to take on the problems facing our country. But, reading this book gave me faith that the American people have elected a very capable public s...

#Good Read (2008-11-18) Though not as good as Dreams from my Father, a well written book. The book talks deeply about Barack s ideals and issues with the current state of politics. Though you may not agree with his political views, Barack is an undeniably intellegent person who is not afraid to express his political views. The message was powerful, it is now just a matter of executing.

#Great Book! (2008-11-17) After reading this book, all I can say is, I m so glad I voted for him. This book is inspiring, thoughtful and hopeful. Read it. I would also recommend highly his other book: Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

#President Barack Obama (2008-11-17) It was after reading this book that I realized that I had to do everything within my power to ensure that Barack Obama was elected President of the United States. There are two kinds of people in the world - those who know how to dream, and those who donot. For those of us who do, this book was a set of important guidelines on what this country could be. It took dreamers to create this great society, and it will take a dreamer and a man of action to get us out of the quagmire we re in today. It was a long shot, but just like millions of other Amer...

Nine years before the Senate campaign that made him one of the most influential and compelling voices in American politics, Barack Obama published this lyrical, unsentimental, and powerfully affecting memoir, which became a #1 New York Times bestseller when it was reissued in 2004. Dreams from My Father tells the story of Obama’s struggle to understand the forces that shaped him as the son of a black African father and white American mother—a struggle that takes him from the American heartland to the ancestral home of his great-aunt in the tiny African village of Alego. Obama opens his story in New York, where he hears that his father—a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man—has died in a car accident. The news triggers a chain of memories as Barack retraces his family’s unusual history: the migration of his mother’s family from small-town Kansas to the Hawaiian islands, the love that develops between his mother and a promising young Kenyan student, a love nurtur...

#Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, Hallowed Be Thy Name. (2008-11-22) Published in 1995, long before Barack Obama could have even conceived of running for president, this coming-of-age memoir brilliantly reflects the confusion of having mixed race parents and of being a black man in today s America. It also finely tells the story of a boy and then a man and his elusive delusions about his missing father. Finally tracking down his heritage and the truth, through Kansas, then Hawaii, and then Kenya, Obama spins a truthful and authentic tale about losing and then finding himself through his...

#The Seinfeld candidate (2008-11-22) Bill Ayers sure can write a good book. Some great fiction mixed with some nice platitudes that everyone can project on to - like the candidate himself.

#An Insightful and Powerful Book (2008-11-21) Barack Obama has written an insightful and powerful book of self-discovery that shaped him and his father s legacy. Obama s search for the truth about race and faith has revealed the powerful character of this great American leader. This book guides us to a further study of identity, class and race alongside Jeffery Leving s www. ourblackheritage. com.

#Obama, a remarkable generalizer (2008-11-17) I have rarely been so privileged to read a book such as DREAMS OF MY FATHER. Obama reveals his thought processes as he struggled to find his place in the larger sicial fabric. Were that all, this would not be so great a book. But, he describes his maturation in thinking as he interacted and learned from others. And, while personally growng, he was able to empathize with others from virtually all walks of life, to relate to them and to abstract the essence of their needs and being. Finally, he was able to integrate those observations int...

#Get to know Obama (2008-11-17) This man has a truly inspirational and amazing life and history. I devoured the book and came back for more. I ve since recommended it to friends and family who have felt that they don t really know the man. Now that he s been elected, I hope everyone will seek out his books and get to know him a little better and let him touch your life as he s definitely touched mine.

Thomas L. Friedman’s no. 1 bestseller The World Is Flat has helped millions of readers to see globalization in a new way. Now Friedman brings a fresh outlook to the crises of destabilizing climate change and rising competition for energy—both of which could poison our world if we do not act quickly and collectively. His argument speaks to all of us who are concerned about the state of America in the global future. Friedman proposes that an ambitious national strategy— which he calls “Geo-Greenism”—is not only what we need to save the planet from overheating, it is what we need to make America healthier, richer, more innovative, more productive, and more secure. As in The World Is Flat, he explains a new era—the Energy-Climate era—through an illuminating account of recent events. He shows how 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the flattening of the world by the Internet (which brought 3 billion new consumers onto the world stage) have combined to bring climate and energy issue...

#DICTATOR FOR A DAY (2008-11-21) While I agree with some of the renewable energy issue, as an American, I have little trust of an individual that sees taking our personal liberties away for a day, see China for a Day chapter. This in an effort to protect us from ourselves. The last thing I need is the government, who can t even balance their own check book, tell me how to live or take my freedoms away for a day so they can push some agenda. While I m not comparing the two, facisim starts with such beliefs. I d read this book with a helpful spoon full of concern. Interestin...

#Hot, Flat and Crowded (2008-11-20) I can t get as excited about global warming as Friedman has. First half of book paints worse-case scenarios in my opinion and is very tiresome reading - very repetetive and overdone with metaphors. Solutions in latter half of book are interesting, but are they all possible or necessary? Am usually a big fan of Friedman s recent op-eds, so a bit disappointed with the book.

#30% recycled content (2008-11-20) Haven t read more than the synopsis yet, but are we to believe Friedman s call for a green revolution when it s published on 70% new paper, and only 30% recycled material?That s a revolution?When Friedman apologizes for his part in cheerleading for the waste of over a trillion dollars in Iraq, money which would be enough to make all the renewable fuel we would ever need, then he can say he s serious. Sorry, Tom, some of your ideas are good, but they re coming from someone living in a credibility canyon. You showed us all what an ugly person you were ...

#Deeply Intriguing Ideas Buried by Breezy Style (2008-11-20) Thomas Friedman s writing is new to me, and from the glowing reviews of this book I expected a little bit more. I m a climate change professional and one of those revolutionary bureaucrats that he praises in his book for doing the real work in protecting human health and the environment (thank you, Mr. Friedman), and I agree with 95 percent of his ideas and solutions - especially placing the true price of dirty fuel back onto the consumer (only then will people choose clean energy over dirty fuels). I give the book three...

#Interest and Thoughtful as usual but a tad over long (2008-11-20) Thomas Friedman is one of the most insightful and thought provoking writers of the current era. Hot, Flat and Crowded does what each of Friedman s works do, they make you think and they provoke a discussion on the topic that he brings up. The nice thing about Friedman is that he isn t some gloom and doom prophet but more a cheerleader of change. I think that Friedman s greatest ability is that he gets people to discuss change without polarizing like so many other writers. If there is one downside to any of his writi...

The year was 1957, the month September, and I had just turned eight years old. Dwight Eisenhower was President, but in my life it was the diminutive, intense Sister Mary Lurana who ruled, at least in the third-grade class where I was held captive. For reasons you will soon understand, my parents had remanded me to the penal institution of St. Brigid’s School in Westbury, New York, a cruel and unusual punishment if there ever was one. Already, I had barely survived my first two years at St. Brigid’s because I was, well, a little nitwit. Not satisfied with memorizing the Baltimore Catechism’s fine prose, which featured passages like “God made me to show his goodness and to make me happy with him in heaven,” I was constantly annoying my classmates and, of course, the no-nonsense Sister Lurana. With sixty overactive students in her class, she was understandably short on patience. For survival, she had also become quick on the draw.Then it happened. One day I blurted out some dumb...

#Bold, Fresh and Real O Reilly (2008-11-22) In order to follow the recent presidential election I became serious about watching and listening to Bill on T. V. and radio. He often refers to his parents and the Catholic experiences that shaped who he is today. Bold-Fresh gives futher humorous insight into a fair and balanced, upright, moral, and sometimes obnoxious gentleman. He has great respect for his parents and the nuns who helped him define right from wrong. This book is an enjoyable quick read with lots of laugh-out-loud parts. The emotional softer side of Bill is also rev...

#Still haven t received it! (2008-11-22) I have not received my copy of Bold Fresh. I wrote to the vendor and got no response. I entered a complaint to AMAZON and got no response. My order was placed on October 18. Help!

#This Time It s Personal (2008-11-21) As the book jacket of A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity says, this time it s personal. Bill O Reilly, the man so many folks love to hate (please don t get Barney Frank started), this time around explains how he came to be the man he is. While it is doubtful that his detractors will read the book, those who admire O Reilly, or at the least find him to be entertaining, will probably enjoy this one. Bill O Reilly, born in 1949, seems to have always been a bit of a rebel despite his upbringing by Depression era parents. Many of his core beliefs, suc...

#This book was a bore (2008-11-20) This book did nothing for me. I couldn t get past the first 20 pages! Don t waste your time and money.

#honest,raw as always (2008-11-20) Reminiscent of the past as relates to future. My life similar as well I am sure many of age 44 and over. Changes aren t always great. I always love O Rielly s books

The astonishing, uplifting story of a real-life Indiana Jones and his humanitarian campaign to use education to combat terrorism in the Taliban’s backyard Anyone who despairs of the individual’s power to change lives has to read the story of Greg Mortenson, a homeless mountaineer who, following a 1993 climb of Pakistan’s treacherous K2, was inspired by a chance encounter with impoverished mountain villagers and promised to build them a school. Over the next decade he built fifty-five schools—especially for girls—that offer a balanced education in one of the most isolated and dangerous regions on earth. As it chronicles Mortenson’s quest, which has brought him into conflict with both enraged Islamists and uncomprehending Americans, Three Cups of Tea combines adventure with a celebration of the humanitarian spirit.

#Just Amazing (2008-11-23) One of the most touching books I have read in a long time. It is just amazing how much we can do with a little bit of financial help to these NGO s like CIA. I have decided to become a regular contributor of these noble cause, just because of this book. You have to read it, you will never regret you did.

#Inspiring (2008-11-22) What an inspiring book! This is a great read about what one person can do with a vision and very little resources. His tenacity is incredible. Hooray for Greg Mortenson!

#Would have been a great article (2008-11-19) This is a tale about a remarkable man - unfortunately it is not very well written. Even tho the action takes place in different towns, it is basically the same story over and over. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in building schools for the poor in Pakistan and also as an aid to sleeplessness.

#3 and a half stars (2008-11-19) The story itself was quite amazing but I found it difficult to read at times. I think it could have been much shorter. . . I could not keep all of the people straight about halfway through the book. It must have been difficult to write this book with so many stories to tell but it bordered on boring and tedious at times. It would pick up for a while and then I d be bleary-eyed again a few pages later. I really liked the beginning of the story and felt connected to his mission and promise but then I started to think he was a bit off (good inten...

#No wonder it unanimously gets 5 stars (2008-11-18) Truly one of the most inspirational books I have read in awhile. The beginning of this book is a little slow, focusing on Greg Mortenson s climbing expeditions that eventually leads him to find the people of Korphe, and promising them a school. After coming back to the states and scrounging up funds from philanthropists, Mortenson goes back and builds many schools in various regions through Pakistan/Afghanistan/Waziristan. And the story of his determination and the struggles he goes through are extremely inspirational. There is no o...