Sarah Palin chided Barack Obama last month for having written two memoirs and (in her opinion) no significant legislation.  Maybe you prefer that Obama would write memoirs rather than legislation.  I won’t argue for or against the latter part of that notion, but I would like Obama to write some more memoirs, and I recommend the two current ones to you because:

1. The guy actually might become president.
2. The books are really pretty good.

The memoirs are Dreams From My Father (1995) and The Audacity of Hope (2006).  Dreams From My Father, subtitled A Story of Race and Inheritance, came about as a result of Obama being elected as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review in 1990 (see more here).  His election garnered quite a bit of attention in law circles and made Obama a rising star, resulting in a contract to write a book, and in a professorship at the University of Chicago.

I don’t doubt that Obama had presidential ambitions back in 1990, but one thing Dreams has going for it is that it was written well before the start of his political career.  In other words, it isn’t a campaign book.  It is in Dreams that you can read Obama’s own account of the parts of his life that are kicked about today - for example, what he did as a community organizer, his acceptance of Jesus Christ, his relationship with the Kenyan segment of his family, his admiration of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, as well as his thoughts and experiences regarding race.

The fact that Obama is running for president makes him a somewhat polarizing figure.  But if we just knew him as a guy at work or from our neighborhood, we’d have to admit that his life has been uniquely fascinating - the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas; raised in Indonesia, then Hawaii, then on to college in California, then New York City, then Chicago, then Harvard, etc.  His American experience spans more places, cultures and colors than most.   And he tells the stories very well.

A WARNING:  Dreams has (surprisingly) a small amount of strong profanity.  Most of it comes when Obama quotes others, and some of it when he quotes his teenage self.  This is especially jarring in the audio version of the book since Obama reads it himself.  (It strikes me that someone could put together an audio track of foul-mouthed Obama to distribute to Christians on the Internet!)  The positive side of Obama as the reader is that he does great accents and imitations of the people he quotes.  Seriously!

As for The Audacity of Hope, it has to be considered a campaign book given its timing, but it doesn’t have the feel of a propaganda piece cobbled together by policy wonks.  I listened to it back in early February.  Here are my thoughts from back then:

It was a pleasure to listen to Barack Obama read his pre-presidential-campaign book, The Audacity of Hope, sort of like listening to a slightly nerdy professor riff on politics and the way things ought to be.  Obama comes across as likable, wise…and somewhat non-specific.  He sees clearly the problems America faces - the crisis in health care, winner-take-all politics, education, national debt - but it’s hard to tell from this book whether he can pull a team together and do anything about these things.

In The Audacity of Hope Obama walks us through his career as a young lawyer and law school professor before telling of his entry into state and national politics.  It’s an interesting life he has lived so far. Depending on what happens during the rest of ‘08, his future books should be even better.