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The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (Audio CD)
by Barack Obama
| Category:
American Dream, American society, Non-fiction |
| Market price: ¥ 328.00
MSL price:
¥ 298.00
[ Shop incentives ]
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| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
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MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
Optimistic, refreshing and beautifully written, The Audacity of Hope is a very American introduction to Senator Obama and his stance on current issues. |
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AllReviews |
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-18 00:00>
The author writes in clear and concise language. It is an easy read. He gives his thoughts on taking back our country and I agree with most of his writings. I think everyone, regardless of political views, should read this and then think for themselves. Too much of the American way of life has been hijacked by people in power. We should not let this happen. At the very least, our elected representatives should read this book. We need to believe we can be better than we are currently.
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John Marshall (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-18 00:00>
Barack Obama was of an interracial marriage. Most of us remember, until 1967, many children in interracial marriages, like children in gay households today, were deprived of equal rights under the laws. Yet, few recall that Albino Luciani (later to become John Paul I) once led the same struggle in Italy.
As a bishop, in Jan 1965, he told the Italian Parliament, "We are speaking here of the pursuit of happiness - the inalienable right of free men to grow up and fall in love with whomever God deems one fall in love with, together with the sacred duty to provide for the economic and loving support of children so that they too can enjoy the pursuit of happiness... Marriage is a God-given individual right and cannot be infringed upon by the majority. The state cannot tell its citizens who they can or cannot marry less we cease to be a free society..." I got this out of the 2006 edition of the only existing biography of the 33 day pope, Lucien Gregoire's 'Murder in the Vatican; The Revolutionary Life of John Paul'. In the same session, Luciani won the right for single persons, including homosexuals, to adopt children to help care for Italy's immense orphan population.
Like Luciani, Obama is a man of towering eloquence, and it is that which will eventually bring him to the top. In the short run, his writings and his deeds will pave the way. Yet, it is his heritage, perhaps, more than anything else that makes him understanding of the true meaning of democracy as Luciani defined it. In August 1963, defending the rights of Negroes and homosexuals, Bishop Luciani told the Italian Christian Democratic Party Convention,"Democracy which finds its strength in rule by the people, can only realize its purpose, its sacred duty to society, in preserving the basic human rights of its loneliest individual." |
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Scott Sheperd (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-18 00:00>
This is a wonderful book written by a thoughtful man who cares about this country. It is a book about the process of finding answers and the willingness to discuss possibilities. Obama does have his own opinions which he states at various times, but much more emphasis is put on the process of finding answers or possible answers to the problems we face. If we allow ourselves to degenerate - actually we are already there - into name calling and demonizing and to fall into the trap of winning at all costs we are doomed. I would love to hear intelligent discussions among Obama, Edwards, Clinton, McCain, Guliani and whoever else is around about the issues raised in the book. No screaming or trying to drown out the other person, but intelligent discussion actually designed to find answers. I fight my own cynicism about the possibility that we can still actually go in the direction of openness and honesty and the ability to explore the complexities of todays problems and not fall into the quick sound bites or the litmus tests. Obama reminded me that there is still hope. For how much longer? Who knows.
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-18 00:00>
It is refreshing to find a politician who offers more than the usual sound bite double-speak. Barack Obama's book covers the vision of America's Founders, an overview of the history that brought us to where we are today and well thought out opinions on where we should go from here. Obama is unflinchingly honest in appraising the strengths and weaknesses of both Democrats and Republicans. His chapter on politics is an eye-opening depiction of the reasons why too many politicians fail the voters. I highly recommend this book for both liberals and conservatives.
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Herbert Calhoun (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-18 00:00>
Mr. Obama is that rare Progressive with a positive agenda and some novel ideas (rather than a wrecking ball) as the preferred tools to end the mean-spirited stalemate in the American political process. He is excruciatingly honest, level headed and clear-headed, which are not always virtues in American politics.
The program outlined in The Audacity of Hope is audacious only in its honesty, clarity, and simplicity. It is to make a renewed appeal to the basic values shared by all Americans, and to use this appeal as a kind of " reverse patriotic English," or "reverse moral wedge" that will begin the process of driving us back together rather than continuing to drive us further apart. Obama's hope is that this mid-course correction will at least reverse, if not end, the deadlock and dysfunction in the political process.
Obama's "audacious hope" is that such "super patriotic appeals" to heed the call to deeper shared American values can be used to forge and reinvigorate virtually non-existent cross-party alliances. The compromises thus forged would serve to detoxify and render functional an otherwise hopelessly deadlocked and a thoroughly dysfunctional, American political process. It is a process that Obama recognizes to be more concerned about the proper spin of rhetoric, the earning of and spending of political capital, political correctness, triangulation, avoiding high negatives, keeping the opposition on the defensive, raising truck loads of unholy money, and getting out the base vote, than about solving a very scary backlog of steadily accumulating national problems.
The Obama hope rests on a thin and illusive premise that a difference does in fact exist between our deeply held and shared values and the narrow political interests that keeps us apart. His theory is that once an enlightened group of the American electorate recognizes that the values that bind us are stronger than those that are driving us apart, then the nation will wake up to the fact that these deeper values are the last hope to bringing us back together, and thus they will willingly join in a larger crusade to end the national division and dysfunction. It is a very interesting but shaky premise to say the least. But it is one that sells well in an election year, and oddly I agree with the author that no matter how shaky it is, we have no choice but to try it. After all, what else is there?
Although the Obama tune has the right beat and is played in the right key, especially for a political season, the disconnect that makes his approach seem almost naïve, is a failure to recognize that in the American political process, it is not so much the values themselves that seem to matter, as it is the use to which they are being put and the particular interests they serve. As Obama knows better than most of us, what we find in the American body politic, is that the shared values that lie on the common substrate that he speaks so eloquently of, are the very ones that are being twisted and bent to serve the will of both the legitimate and the illegitimate interests of the various competing groups and subgroups.
In fact, it would not be much of an exaggeration to say that it is peculiarly American that, since the founding of the nation itself, most of the national conversation has been, and continues to be about how these much cherished values are interpreted and used, rather than about the moral legitimacy of the claims made against them, and the interests those claims most often serve.
No one, including Obama wants to raise the ugly issue of how since the nation's founding, our cherished values have always been, and continue to be, used to defend both morally legitimate and morally illegitimate interests. In every instance, it has been "the interests behind our values" and "not the values per se" that has been the hidden subject of our national moral "tug of war."
Some how as a nation, we must come to admit that some interests are morally illegitimate - even if deeply held by a majority of the people - and others are not. Otherwise, how can we continue to pin our hopes (audacious or otherwise) on the pretense that illegitimate and legitimate interests have equal claims on our national values and resources, and then not expect dysfunction and division to be the ultimate corrupting result?
It seems that the moral disconnect in the Obama theory is failing to recognize this very point: That while there is indeed a common set of shared American values, it is precisely this set that is being challenged through differential interpretation and used to promote different and usually opposing interests - some of which are morally legitimate, others of which are morally suspect, and a few at times which are even morally reprehensible. It is these "competing interests," rather than their moral legitimacy, that seems to matter most to even the select group of Americans to which his appeal is being made. Failing to recognize that this difference has had, and will continue to have a corrupting effect on the American political process, is not in itself a viable program, but very much another wish-fulfilling mirage.
Thus, it is reasonable to ask: Is Obama's plan just more of the same old wine of self-serving and self-fulfilling prophesy in a new bottle? Or is it new wine in the same old bottle? Only the Presidential campaign will tell.
Despite this, The Audacity of Hope is the most honest and the clearest analysis of the contemporary American political scene in this century; the book thus deserves five stars. |
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Jon Hunt (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-18 00:00>
The most exciting politician to hit the airwaves over the past couple of years has been Illinois Senator Barack Obama and now with his new book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama has given more of himself to the public. It is a thoughtful and personal (if somewhat uneven) account of his life, his ideas and his opinions.
Obama is at his best in this book when he talks about himself. His story is matchless and it is clear that he has spent time in putting together a narrative that is as compelling as his life story. A quote that stands out for me is this one..."the arguments of liberals are more often grounded in reason and fact". Yes, he's a liberal and proud of it, although he leaves just enough wiggle room to suggest he is more of a compromiser than a risk taker. Perhaps he really is looking more for an extended Senate career than a run for the White House.
The downside of The Audacity of Hope lies in the fact that a good deal of the book sounds like a campaign platform. The tax cuts favoring the rich, for instance, while soundly repudiated by Senator Obama, is a talking point that still comes across as campaign rhetoric. To be sure, there is a politician in him, for better or worse. For all the insights he offers, Obama sometimes lacks an inventive way of relating them. Still, there is a comprehensive attempt on his part to explain his positions vis-a-vis current realities and as a teacher he is very good.
I don't know what kind of president Barack Obama would make should he run and win, but The Audacity of Hope is a good start at a national introduction. If the reader can get through the drier points of the book, the personal reflections are well worth the read.
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