Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition

AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL LIFE in the last half century defies neat synthesis. So many inconsistent and cross-cutting ideas have emerged that a tidy account is almost impossible. Near the beginning of Dreams from My Father, however, Barack Obama captures the central dynamic with exceptional insight and such subtlety that readers might miss it. He paints a portrait of his mother and her parents that captures the midtwentieth-century mindset of millions—perhaps even the majority—of Americans. From their origins in Kansas, Obama’s maternal grandparents migrated to Texas, then to Washington, then to Hawaii, arriving in the nation’s newest state convinced of what Obama calls “the seeming triumph of universalism over parochialism and narrow mindedness.” They saw themselves playing a part in creat

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