The Dream Begins: How Hawaii Shaped Barack Obama
by Stu Glaberman and Jerry Burris (Watermark Publishing)
While the inspirational story of Barack Obama‘s life is now familiar to most, Hawaiian journalists Glaberman and Burris give it a little Aloha State context. If you’ve noticed the president-elect likes basketball, they tell us: “Before he was a politician in a well-tailored suit, he was a lanky kid with a trimmed Afro who loved to bodysurf and dreamed of moving to the mainland to be an NBA star.” His nickname then: Barry O’Bomber, for his long jump shots.
Kenya: A Country in the Making, 1880-1940
by Nigel Pavitt (Norton)
The photos collected by Pavitt, a writer and photographer who’s lived in Kenya are simply incredible – really from another world. They show the absurdities of Colonial rule in the African nation where Obama’s father is from: proud British hunters in front of the skins of 31 lions they’d hunted, a proper tea with barely dressed natives standing by, locomotives being lowered from mountaintops by cable. Plus, there are even celebs of the day – Ernest Hemingway, Theodore Roosevelt, both on safari.
Michelle: A Biography
by Liza Mundy (Simon & Schuster)
A thorough look at our next first lady, from her Southside Chicago childhood to her time as one of the few black students at Princeton University, her days a Harvard Law and family life with Barack and the girls. Washington Post reporter Mundy interviewed more than 100 people, including the subject, herself. Did you know Michelle likes to watch reruns of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and “The Brady Bunch”?
Wackiest White House Pets
by Kathryn Gibbs Davis, illustratred by David A. Johnson (Scholastic)
In case the puppy thing doesn’t work out for the Obama family for some reason, this book – aimed grade-school kids, but fun for everyone – offers alternatives. John Quincy Adams, for example, kept an alligator in the East Room for a couple of months. Calvin Coolidge had a raccoon. Benjamin Harrison had a goat, which he wound up chasing down Pennsylvania Avenue one day when Old Whiskers escaped.