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AN OBAMA'S JOURNEY

Name: AN OBAMA'S JOURNEY
Author: Mark Obama Ndesandjo
ISBN: 978-1493007516

MY ODYSSEY OF SELF-DISCOVERY ACROSS THREE CULTURES

by Mark Obama Ndesandjo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 2014

A deft memoir that, despite the self-indulgent posturing about unique family dynamics, is oddly engaging.

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An Obama about whom we haven’t heard a lot seeks, in the story of his cosmopolitan life, to find himself.

The author is a half brother of the president. Ndesandjo’s mother, Ruth, was the third wife of Barack Obama Sr. Ndesandjo (Nairobi to Shenzhen, 2009) lived with both parents at home in Kenya. Obama Sr., in whom the author saw a “terrible magnificence,” was an abusive womanizer and drunkard. After seven years, Ruth had had enough. She left and wed the solid, caring man whose name the author bears. Peripatetic young Ndesandjo failed to be admitted to Harvard, where his father and brother had excelled, and he struggled with life and studies at Brown and at graduate school at Stanford. There, he was discovered cheating, but he managed a master’s degree in physics, as well as an MBA from Emory. After Emory, it was on to a series of jobs and beautiful women. The author was also quite proficient at the piano, performing publicly. There were difficulties with creditors, though, which finally subsided when Ndesandjo immigrated to China 12 years ago, where he married and studies Chinese and calligraphy. Still, he struggles to come to terms with his mixed racial heritage, noting that he often feels like an outsider. Though not lacking in pride and ambition, how can his considerable talents match the achievements of his brother, the POTUS? They first met decades ago in a fraught encounter; Barack had seemed distant. But Ndesandjo, just around the time of the 2008 presidential campaign, became eager to restore the family connection. The result was a visit to the White House and some family squabbles over access to the president. The author is simultaneously quite accomplished and quite needful of praise. Stressing his sensitivity, he begins each chapter with a favorite evocation of music, from Schumann to Fats Waller.

A deft memoir that, despite the self-indulgent posturing about unique family dynamics, is oddly engaging.

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2014

ISBN: 978-1493007516

Page Count: 392

Publisher: Lyons Press

Review Posted Online: July 26, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | POLITICAL & ROYALTY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)