Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama
For readers of literary memoirs on race or father-son relationships, such as James McBride's The Color of Water or Calvin Trillin's Messages from My Father, as well as anyone tracking Obama's meteoric rise in the political arena.
In this lyrical and unsentimental memoir, originally published in 1995 and now reissued with a new preface by the author, the son of a black African father and white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. The author is the current Democratic favorite for the open U.S. Senate seat in Illinois.