Book-It 'o13! Book #30
The Fifty Books Challenge, year four! (Years one, two, three, and four just in case you're curious.) This was a secondhand find.
Title: The American Journey of Barack Obama by the editors of LIFE magazine with a foreword by Sen. Edward M Kennedy
Details: Copyright 2008, Little, Brown and Company
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): ""The phenomenon that is Barack Obama has intrigued us all. Who is Barack Obama? The editors of LIFE have gone a very long way toward helping us all answer this question. Senator Obama's singularly American life has been characterized by tragedy and triumph, drama and despair, anxiety and anticipation, and, ultimately, enormous excitement and the deepest historical significance.
In this book, Obama's tale is told in all of its dimensions, from the mistakes he has made and the obstacles he has confronted and overcome, to his moments of almost sublime and glorious transcendence. With spectacular photographs--funny, surprising,exceptional in detail--combined with a highly readable narrative, Obama's biography comes to life, from his youth in Hawaii to his roots in Africa, from Harvard to Chicago and, eventually, to his life as a public servant in Washington.
Who is Barack Obama? Read these compelling words and study these exceptionally candid and beautiful photographs and discover the answer for yourself." (Henry Louis Gates, Jr. )"
Why I Wanted to Read It: A family member that remembered by support of Obama in both elections offered this to me.
How I Liked It: A charge that was put to Obama from the beginning of his first campaign is that he has a love affair with the media (or rather, the media has a love affair with him). I've frequently thought that pundits confused "news coverage" with "support." Witness the phenomenon of the selection of Sarah Palin that dwarfed Obama in the press, his campaign allegedly feeling for the first time that they knew what Hillary Clinton's campaign had been through, trying to wrangle press attention.
This book could easily be one of the exhibits (if one is to take commemorative/coffee table books seriously) presented in the charge. Even the title itself could be seen as a rebuke to the deliberate "othering" of Obama's most noxious critics. "American" might as well be underlined.
The book heaps praise on not only the achievements of Obama, but of his family, including his wife. In a sense, this is fair: His wife and family boast stories of success fairly unarguably (a daughter of Chicago's South Side who went on to become an Ivy League attorney, a war hero grandfather, a pregnant teenage mother that would return to school to complete her education). But it becomes gratuitous when everyone pictured, seemingly everyone connected to Obama is drenched in laudatory prose.
The book doesn't offer a great deal of photographs that most Obama enthusiasts won't have already seen (early childhood, college, so on) but it does offer some decent "behind-the-scenes/edge-of-the-action" photos for which LIFE is known.
It's meant as a memento of the campaign, and as such five years later, it gets lost in a sea of momentos.
Notable: Sad and almost a little chilling is the emphasis places on Obama's then-still living grandmother. Apparently only those close to the family knew how near her death was. The fact she'd die less than a month after the publication of this book about his life (and the important people in it) makes the fact she didn't live long enough to see her grandson elected president all the sadder.
Title: The American Journey of Barack Obama by the editors of LIFE magazine with a foreword by Sen. Edward M Kennedy
Details: Copyright 2008, Little, Brown and Company
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): ""The phenomenon that is Barack Obama has intrigued us all. Who is Barack Obama? The editors of LIFE have gone a very long way toward helping us all answer this question. Senator Obama's singularly American life has been characterized by tragedy and triumph, drama and despair, anxiety and anticipation, and, ultimately, enormous excitement and the deepest historical significance.
In this book, Obama's tale is told in all of its dimensions, from the mistakes he has made and the obstacles he has confronted and overcome, to his moments of almost sublime and glorious transcendence. With spectacular photographs--funny, surprising,exceptional in detail--combined with a highly readable narrative, Obama's biography comes to life, from his youth in Hawaii to his roots in Africa, from Harvard to Chicago and, eventually, to his life as a public servant in Washington.
Who is Barack Obama? Read these compelling words and study these exceptionally candid and beautiful photographs and discover the answer for yourself." (Henry Louis Gates, Jr. )"
Why I Wanted to Read It: A family member that remembered by support of Obama in both elections offered this to me.
How I Liked It: A charge that was put to Obama from the beginning of his first campaign is that he has a love affair with the media (or rather, the media has a love affair with him). I've frequently thought that pundits confused "news coverage" with "support." Witness the phenomenon of the selection of Sarah Palin that dwarfed Obama in the press, his campaign allegedly feeling for the first time that they knew what Hillary Clinton's campaign had been through, trying to wrangle press attention.
This book could easily be one of the exhibits (if one is to take commemorative/coffee table books seriously) presented in the charge. Even the title itself could be seen as a rebuke to the deliberate "othering" of Obama's most noxious critics. "American" might as well be underlined.
The book heaps praise on not only the achievements of Obama, but of his family, including his wife. In a sense, this is fair: His wife and family boast stories of success fairly unarguably (a daughter of Chicago's South Side who went on to become an Ivy League attorney, a war hero grandfather, a pregnant teenage mother that would return to school to complete her education). But it becomes gratuitous when everyone pictured, seemingly everyone connected to Obama is drenched in laudatory prose.
The book doesn't offer a great deal of photographs that most Obama enthusiasts won't have already seen (early childhood, college, so on) but it does offer some decent "behind-the-scenes/edge-of-the-action" photos for which LIFE is known.
It's meant as a memento of the campaign, and as such five years later, it gets lost in a sea of momentos.
Notable: Sad and almost a little chilling is the emphasis places on Obama's then-still living grandmother. Apparently only those close to the family knew how near her death was. The fact she'd die less than a month after the publication of this book about his life (and the important people in it) makes the fact she didn't live long enough to see her grandson elected president all the sadder.