Critical Essays on Barack Obama

Critical Essays on Barack Obama PDF Author: Melvin B. Rahming
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443836222
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
This collection of critical essays explores the life and writings of President Barack Obama. The individual essays, written by a diverse body of scholars, examine specific facets of Obama’s career – from personal, communal, national and international reactions to his presidential election; to his controversial contributions to the global conversation about race; his impact on popular culture and race relations; his literary, political and philosophical visions; his attitude toward the American constitution; his enactment of new legislation; to the manner in which he attempts to influence American public policy; and to the implications his presidency holds for Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. Ranging far beyond the presentation of personal opinions about the Obama Administration, these essays offer scholarly perspectives on Obama’s two books, and on his multidimensional efforts to remove the obstacles to equality of opportunity in the United States. They also explore Obama’s potential for re-shaping the American social and cultural terrain and, by extension, for re-vitalizing the American Dream. This book should be of interest to scholars of political science, literature, history, philosophy, religion and psycho-culture as well as to the general reading public.

Critical Essays on Barack Obama

Critical Essays on Barack Obama PDF Author: Melvin B. Rahming
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443836222
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Get Book Here

Book Description
This collection of critical essays explores the life and writings of President Barack Obama. The individual essays, written by a diverse body of scholars, examine specific facets of Obama’s career – from personal, communal, national and international reactions to his presidential election; to his controversial contributions to the global conversation about race; his impact on popular culture and race relations; his literary, political and philosophical visions; his attitude toward the American constitution; his enactment of new legislation; to the manner in which he attempts to influence American public policy; and to the implications his presidency holds for Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. Ranging far beyond the presentation of personal opinions about the Obama Administration, these essays offer scholarly perspectives on Obama’s two books, and on his multidimensional efforts to remove the obstacles to equality of opportunity in the United States. They also explore Obama’s potential for re-shaping the American social and cultural terrain and, by extension, for re-vitalizing the American Dream. This book should be of interest to scholars of political science, literature, history, philosophy, religion and psycho-culture as well as to the general reading public.

Barack Obama

Barack Obama PDF Author: M. Stefan Strozier
Publisher: World Audience Incorporated
ISBN: 9781935444572
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
A collection of critical essays about President Barack Obama. Unlike previous books about Obama, this is a current study. Written by a diverse group of writers, scholars, poets and artists, with pictures, essays and poems.

Race and Identity in Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father

Race and Identity in Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father PDF Author: Michael A. Zeitler
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780773416017
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Written 15 years before his rise to the presidency, Barack Obama's 1994 'Dreams from My Father' is an important literary and cultural contribution to the national conversation. This book examines significant aspects of the text both in relation to the African American literary tradition and to the context of the relevant historical and cultural productions that inform it.

The Obama Phenomenon

The Obama Phenomenon PDF Author: Femi Ojo-Ade
Publisher: Africa Research and Publications
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
Edited by internationally recognised scholar Femi Ojo-Ade, this volume brings together a mixture of young intellectuals and seasoned scholars from Africa and its diaspora to address various implications of the Obama phenomenon, all from an Afro-oriented perspective. Far from being a neologism coined from what some would dismiss as Obama's political jingoism, The Obama Phenomenon: Change We Can is an affirmation of potential power, a call-out to people of all races and cultures to work together for the just cause of human progress.

The Presidential Campaign of Barack Obama

The Presidential Campaign of Barack Obama PDF Author: Dewey M. Clayton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135841411
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
In the early twenty-first century, race still occupies a dominant role in American politics. Despite this truism, presidential candidate Barack Obama was uniquely poised to transcend both race and party as the first African American to have a realistic chance of winning the presidency. Previous contenders running in the traditional mode of the Civil Rights Movement based their appeal primarily on African American voters. Obama, on the other hand, ran a deracialized campaign in an effort to appeal to voters of different backgrounds and political parties. Clayton examines how race in American politics has changed over time and offers an explanation for why Obama’s candidacy offers a different roadmap for the future. The Presidential Campaign of Barack Obama provides students of politics, inside and outside of the classroom, a unique opportunity to explore the institutional and structural challenges an African American faces in becoming the president of the United States. This guide to major issues in Black politics and the ins and outs of the 2008 campaign provides the necessary contours for understanding how the highest elected African American official won office.

Audacity

Audacity PDF Author: Jonathan Chait
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062426990
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
"An essential starting point for those assessing the Obama presidency.” —Washington Monthly Two presidencies later, the time has never been better to revisit the legacy of Barack Obama. In Audacity, New York Magazine writer Jonathan Chait makes the unassailable case that, in the eyes of history, Obama will be viewed as one of America’s best and most accomplished presidents. Over the course of eight years, Barack Obama has amassed an array of outstanding achievements. His administration saved the American economy from collapse, expanded health insurance to millions who previously could not afford it, negotiated an historic nuclear deal with Iran, helped craft a groundbreaking international climate accord, reined in Wall Street and crafted a new vision of racial progress. He has done all of this despite a left that frequently disdained him as a sellout, and a hysterical right that did everything possible to destroy his agenda even when they agreed with what he was doing. Now, as the page turns to our next Commander in Chief, Jonathan Chait, acclaimed as one of the most incisive and meticulous political commentators in America, digs deep into Obama’s record on major policy fronts—economics, the environment, domestic reform, health care, race, foreign policy, and civil rights—to demonstrate why history will judge our forty-fourth president as among the greatest in history. Audacity does not shy away from Obama’s failures, most notably in foreign policy. Yet Chait convincingly shows that President Obama has accomplished what candidate Obama said he would, despite overwhelming opposition—and that the hopes of those who voted for him have not been dashed despite the smokescreen of extremist propaganda and the limits of short-term perspective.

The Presidency of Barack Obama

The Presidency of Barack Obama PDF Author: Julian E. Zelizer
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691160287
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
"Barack Obama's election as the first African American president seemed to usher in a new era, and he took office in 2009 with great expectations. But by his second term, Republicans controlled Congress, and, after the 2016 presidential election, Obama's legacy and the health of the Democratic Party itself appeared in doubt. In The Presidency of Barack Obama, Julian Zelizer gathers leading American historians to put President Obama and his administration into political and historical context. These writers offer strikingly original assessments of the big issues that shaped the Obama years, including the conservative backlash, race, the financial crisis, health care, crime, drugs, counterterrorism, Iraq and Afghanistan, the environment, immigration, education, gay rights, and urban policy. Together, these essays suggest that Obama's central paradox is that, despite effective policymaking, he failed to receive credit for his many achievements and wasn't a party builder. Provocatively, they ask why Obama didn't unite Democrats and progressive activists to fight the conservative counter-tide as it grew stronger." -- Publisher's description

A Promised Land

A Promised Land PDF Author: Barack Obama
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1524763179
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 801

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Book Description
A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making—from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAACP IMAGE AWARD NOMINEE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND PEOPLE NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times • NPR • The Guardian • Slate • Vox • The Economist • Marie Claire In the stirring first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil. Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation’s highest office. Reflecting on the presidency, he offers a unique and thoughtful exploration of both the awesome reach and the limits of presidential power, as well as singular insights into the dynamics of U.S. partisan politics and international diplomacy. Obama brings readers inside the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room, and to Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, and points beyond. We are privy to his thoughts as he assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with generals about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, tackles Wall Street reform, responds to the devastating Deepwater Horizon blowout, and authorizes Operation Neptune’s Spear, which leads to the death of Osama bin Laden. A Promised Land is extraordinarily intimate and introspective—the story of one man’s bet with history, the faith of a community organizer tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages of “hope and change,” and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making. He is frank about the forces that opposed him at home and abroad, open about how living in the White House affected his wife and daughters, and unafraid to reveal self-doubt and disappointment. Yet he never wavers from his belief that inside the great, ongoing American experiment, progress is always possible. This beautifully written and powerful book captures Barack Obama’s conviction that democracy is not a gift from on high but something founded on empathy and common understanding and built together, day by day.

Obama and The End of the American Dream

Obama and The End of the American Dream PDF Author: Michael A. Peters
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9460917712
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 119

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Book Description
The American Dream that crystallized around James Truslow Adams’ The Epic of America originally formulated in the early 1930s and was conditioned by a decade of complexity and contradiction, of big government projects, intensely fierce nationalism, the definition of the American way, and a distinctive collection of American iconic narratives has had the power and force to successively reshape America for every new generation. Indeed, Adam’s dream of opportunity for each according to ability or achievement shaped against the old class culture of Europe emphasizes a vision of social order in which each person can succeed despite their social origins. Barack Obama, a skillful rhetorician and intelligent politician, talks of restoring the American and has used its narrative resources to define his campaign and his policies. In a time of international and domestic crisis, of massive sovereign debt, of the failure of neoliberalism, of growing inequalities, the question is whether the American Dream and the vision of an equal education on which it rests can be revitalized.

Bending History

Bending History PDF Author: Martin S. Indyk
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815724470
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
By the time of Barack Obama's inauguration as the 44th president of the United States, he had already developed an ambitious foreign policy vision. By his own account, he sought to bend the arc of history toward greater justice, freedom, and peace; within a year he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, largely for that promise. In Bending History, Martin Indyk, Kenneth Lieberthal, and Michael O’Hanlon measure Obama not only against the record of his predecessors and the immediate challenges of the day, but also against his own soaring rhetoric and inspiring goals. Bending History assesses the considerable accomplishments as well as the failures and seeks to explain what has happened. Obama's best work has been on major and pressing foreign policy challenges—counterterrorism policy, including the daring raid that eliminated Osama bin Laden; the "reset" with Russia; managing the increasingly significant relationship with China; and handling the rogue states of Iran and North Korea. Policy on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, however, has reflected serious flaws in both strategy and execution. Afghanistan policy has been plagued by inconsistent messaging and teamwork. On important "softer" security issues—from energy and climate policy to problems in Africa and Mexico—the record is mixed. As for his early aspiration to reshape the international order, according greater roles and responsibilities to rising powers, Obama's efforts have been well-conceived but of limited effectiveness. On issues of secondary importance, Obama has been disciplined in avoiding fruitless disputes (as with Chavez in Venezuela and Castro in Cuba) and insisting that others take the lead (as with Qaddafi in Libya). Notwithstanding several missteps, he has generally managed well the complex challenges of the Arab awakenings, striving to strike the right balance between U.S. values and interests. The authors see Obama's foreign policy to date as a triumph of discipline and realism over ideology. He has been neither the transformative beacon his devotees have wanted, nor the weak apologist for America that his critics allege. They conclude that his grand strategy for promoting American interests in a tumultuous world may only now be emerging, and may yet be curtailed by conflict with Iran. Most of all, they argue that he or his successor will have to embrace U.S. economic renewal as the core foreign policy and national security challenge of the future.