'The Audacity of Hope'
Author: Barack Obama
Publisher: Canongate / 2006
Pages: 375
If one were to depend on the popular media regarding the Obamas these days only one issue keeps coming up: will the Obamas separate and divorce?
It all seems to be coming from when Michelle Obama did not attend Jimmy Carter's funeral nor, a few days later, Donald Trump's inauguration.
There were all kinds of speculation but some attributed this absence especially at the Trump inaugural to a heavy-handedness on Trump's part to which Michelle objected.
Others saw the refusal as a sort of general protest at Trump's whole attitude. A commentator on La Repubblica entitled her article Michelle Obama: una di noi.
There was also the story how Obama's elder daughter, Malia, was harassed, arrested and almost made to lose her flight when she was on her way to deliver a speech and it was only when her father was called and rushed to the airport that she was allowed to proceed.
The wilder fringes of speculation, as I hinted earlier, was that the couple was about to divorce and the friendship between Barack and actress Jennifer Aniston was mentioned.
In all reply, Michelle replied she is a big girl now and quite able to take her own decisions. She admitted however she is having therapy.
That's how the inner workings of a couple can find themselves spread out for public view when the media interferes.
Mainly, I believe, the right-wing media never forgave Obama for trouncing Trump. He was everything they hated.
Some have never forgiven Obama for being the first black man to become President, for being descended from an African family and for thus providing a living example to all members of minority groups to continue to struggle to improve their situation and integration.
The book being reviewed today was published before Obama won the presidency for the first time, the first and so far the only African-American to become President.
Being somewhat premature it cannot tell us about the outcome and success or failure of Obama's policies. Obviously, one cannot expect from it an objective analysis.
But it does tell us, at some length, about the ideas and the principles of Obama the man and politician.
There is a surprising similarity between Obama and the new Pope. They both started their official lives working among the poor of Chicago, both involved in the organising of local groups.
Then Obama went on to Harvard Law School, where he faced huge difficulties; yet emerged as a local politician ascending the grades of politics.
The Pope, on the other hand, did consider going on to Harvard but then chose to go to the missions.
In both, the Christian faith (Catholicism for the Pope, Baptist for Obama) was, and still is, fundamental.
Their basic principles are a world different from the principles, if they have, of Trump and the Maga brigade.
The irony of all this is of course that it is in this context that the 2018 economic crisis took place.
The first book, Dreams from my Father, is quite auto-biographical, a refreshing, revealing portrait of a young man asking the big questions about identity and belonging.
The son of a black African father and a white American mother, Obama retraces the migration of his mother's family from Kansas to Hawaii, then to his childhood home in Indonesia. Finally he travels to Kenya, where he confronts the bitter truth of his father's life.
In this bestselling book, the second one he wrote, Obama discusses the importance of empathy and inclusiveness in politics, his hopes for a different America with different policies and how the ideals of its democracy can be renewed.
A public servant and a lawyer, a professor and a father, a Christian and a sceptic, Obama has written a book that inspires people all over the world.
Not all chapters are alike: in some you hear the professor theorising. The best are those where he explains and dissects local politics.
He served the two full terms and after him the Democrats did not have anyone able to stop the Trump juggernaut - just see the Kamala Harris failure.