Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that answer the question.
Query: When did Barack Obama write his autobiography?
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995) is a memoir by Barack Obama, who was elected as U.S. President in 2008. The memoir explores the events of Obama's early years in Honolulu and Chicago up until his entry into law school in 1988. Obama published the memoir in July 1995, when he was starting his political campaign for Illinois Senate.[1] He had been elected as the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review in 1990.[2] According to The New York Times, Obama modeled Dreams from My Father on Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man.[3]
David Freddoso is an American political conservative commentator, journalist, and author, best known for writing three books critical of the Barack Obama administration as well as for his columns for the "National Review Online" and the "Washington Examiner". The first book, "The Case Against Barack Obama", reached the New York Times bestseller list as well as the Amazon.com official Top 20 list. Having worked in politics since 2002, his latest book is "Spin Masters: How the Media Ignored the Real News and Helped Re-elect Barack Obama", which he published January 28, 2013. His writings have involved criticism of what he sees as left-liberal media bias in the American journalistic mainstream.
The following is a timeline of the Presidency of Barack Obama, from January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2010. For his time as President-elect, see the Presidential transition of Barack Obama; for a detailed account of his first months in office, see First 100 days of Barack Obama's presidency; for a complete itinerary of his travels, see List of presidential trips made by Barack Obama.
According to Alinsky biographer Sanford Horwitt, U.S. President Barack Obama was influenced by Alinsky and followed in his footsteps as a Chicago-based community organizer. Horwitt asserted that Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign was influenced by Alinsky's teachings. Alinsky's influence on Obama has been heavily emphasized by some of his detractors, such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Historian Thomas Sugrue writes, "as with all conspiracy theories, the Alinsky-Obama link rests on a kernel of truth". For three years in the mid 80s, Obama worked for the Developing Communities Project, which was influenced by Alinsky's work, and he wrote an essay that was collected in a book memorializing Alinsky. Newt Gingrich repeatedly stated his opinion that Alinsky was a major influence on Obama during his 2012 presidential campaign, equating Alinsky with "European Socialism", although Alinsky was U.S.-born and was not a Socialist. Gingrich's campaign itself used tactics described by Alinsky's writing.
The following is a timeline of the Presidency of Barack Obama, from January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2012. For his time as President-elect, see the Presidential transition of Barack Obama; for a detailed account of his first months in office, see First 100 days of Barack Obama's presidency; for a complete itinerary of his travels, see List of presidential trips made by Barack Obama.
In "The Audacity of Hope", Obama writes that he "was not raised in a religious household". He describes his mother, raised by non-religious parents (whom Obama has specified elsewhere as "non-practicing Methodists and Baptists") to be detached from religion, yet "in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I have ever known". He describes his father as "raised a Muslim", but a "confirmed atheist" by the time his parents met, and his stepfather as "a man who saw religion as not particularly useful". His spiritual change of heart as an adult and his coming to believe in Christianity is a major part of his autobiography "Dreams from My Father". Obama has stated that he "felt a beckoning of the spirit" at this time. He has also said that his political/ethical beliefs are "guided by his Christian faith" including belief "in the power of prayer."
The following is a timeline of the presidency of Barack Obama, from January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2015. For his time as President-elect, see the Presidential transition of Barack Obama; for a detailed account of his first months in office, see First 100 days of Barack Obama's presidency; and for a complete itinerary of his travels, see List of presidential trips made by Barack Obama.
Said to be Barack Obama's half-brother, he is also known as Samson Obama, and was born in 1968 to Kezia Obama. In "Dreams from My Father," Obama wrote that his Obama relatives doubt that Abo and Bernard are the biological sons of Barack Obama, Sr. Abo manages a mobile phone shop in Kenya.
The election of Barack Obama also brought back international discourse regarding Kenya's Mau Mau uprising, as Obama's father had been interned by the British for his Mau Mau alignment. While this was a non-issue in Kenya, it put some domestic pressure on Obama to distance himself from his Kenyan heritage. However, Barack Obama has always been explicit that Kenya should expect no favors from him due to his heritage. Despite concerns regarding favoritism, the Obama administration did not take a more active role in Kenyan politics like some expected.
"The Times" of London, relying on statements by Obama's third wife, Sarah Onyango Obama, 87, reported that in 1949, after becoming more politically active, Obama was jailed by the British for two years for suspicion of supplying military information to the Kenyan independence movement, owing to "His job as a cook to a British army officer." According to Sarah, Obama was subjected to beatings and abuse that left him with physical scars and a loathing of the British. David Maraniss' 2012 biography of President Barack Obama states that his grandfather Obama did not participate in the insurrections; nor was he ever imprisoned by the British during the uprising. He continued to be trusted by white Kenyans.
Chancelor Jonathan Bennett was born in Chicago, Illinois. His father, Ken Williams-Bennett, was an aide to former Chicago mayor Harold Washington and then-Senator Barack Obama. His mother, Lisa Bennett, worked for the Illinois Attorney General. Bennett grew up in the middle-class neighborhood of West Chatham on Chicago's South Side. When Bennett was sixteen, his father began to work in the Department of Labor during President Barack Obama's first term. Bennett personally met President Obama in his youth and discussed his aspirations to be a rapper, to which Obama responded with "word". Bennett was originally going to move to Washington, D.C. following Obama's win in the 2008 presidential election, though those plans eventually fell through. Bennett attended Jones College Prep High School where he was a member of the Jewish Student Union. During his time in high school, Bennett did not get good grades and was suspended often.
He opposed Barack Obama, saying that U.S. voters did not "know a phoney when they see one" and adding: "If they did, Barack Obama would not be president".
Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961, at Kapi'olani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital (now called Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women & Children) in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Ann Dunham, from Wichita, Kansas, and her husband Barack Obama Sr., a Luo from Nyang'oma Kogelo, Nyanza Province (in what was then the Colony and Protectorate of Kenya), who was attending the University of Hawaii. Birth notices for Barack Obama were published in "The Honolulu Advertiser" on August 13 and the "Honolulu Star-Bulletin" on August 14, 1961. Obama's father's immigration file also clearly states Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. One of his high school teachers, who was acquainted with his mother at the time, remembered hearing about the day of his birth.
At the time, Onyango gave Obama perspective on his father and his achievements, noting that, when Barack Sr. left Kenya for Hawaii in 1959 to go to college, he was the first in the family to travel by airplane and to study abroad. She also provided details about the complicated extended family from his father's four marriages (two of which were polygamous). Barack Obama Sr. fathered six sons and a daughter in addition to Obama. As of 2010, all but one live in Britain or the United States; Mark Obama Ndesandjo lives in China. After returning to Kenya with a master's degree from Harvard University, Barack Sr. became an economist in the government. He eventually rose to become senior economist in the Kenyan Ministry of Finance before political conflict with President Kenyatta destroyed his career. In his memoir "Dreams from My Father" (1995), Barack Obama wrote about his journey to Kenya, including meeting Onyango, whom he called "Aunti Zeituni".
Barack Obama's half-brother, also known as Abongo or Roy, was born c. March 1958, the son of Barack Obama Sr. and his first wife, Kezia. Malik Obama was born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya. He earned a degree in accounting from the University of Nairobi. The half brothers met for the first time in 1985 when Barack flew from Chicago to Washington, D.C., to visit Malik. Malik and his half-brother Barack were best men at each other's weddings. Barack Obama brought his wife Michelle to Kenya three years later, and they met with Malik again while meeting many other relatives for the first time.
The following is a timeline of the presidency of Barack Obama, from January 1, 2016 to December 31, 2016. For his time as President-elect, see the Presidential transition of Barack Obama; for a detailed account of his first months in office, see First 100 days of Barack Obama's presidency; and for a complete itinerary of his travels, see List of presidential trips made by Barack Obama.
Barack Hussein Obama Sr. (; 18 June 1936 – 24 November 1982) was a Kenyan senior governmental economist and the father of Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States. He is a central figure of his son's memoir, "Dreams from My Father" (1995). Obama married in 1954 and had two children with his first wife, Kezia. He was selected for a special program to attend college in the United States and studied at the University of Hawaii. There, Obama met Stanley Ann Dunham, whom he married in 1961, and with whom he had a son, Barack II. She divorced him three years later. The elder Obama later went to Harvard University for graduate school, where he earned an M.A. in economics, and returned to Kenya in 1964. He saw his son Barack once more, when he was about ten.
The following is a timeline of the Presidency of Barack Obama, from January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2011. For his time as President-elect, see the Presidential transition of Barack Obama; for a detailed account of his first months in office, see First 100 days of Barack Obama's presidency; for a complete itinerary of his travels, see List of presidential trips made by Barack Obama.
The following is a timeline of the Presidency of Barack Obama from his inauguration as president of the United States on January 20, 2009, to December 31, 2009. For his time as president-elect, see the Presidential transition of Barack Obama; for a detailed account of his first months in office, see First 100 days of Barack Obama's presidency; for a complete itinerary of his travels, see List of presidential trips made by Barack Obama.
At times using a variation of the name of his father, Onyango Obama, Omar Okech Obama is a half-uncle of Barack Obama. Born on June 3, 1944, in Nyang'oma Kogelo, he is the eldest son of Onyango and his third wife, Sarah Obama. He moved to the United States in October 1963 when he was 17 years old as part of Kenya president Tom Mboya's Airlift Africa project, to send promising Kenyan students to the US for education, particularly undergraduate and graduate school. Once he arrived in the country, his half-brother, Barack Obama Sr., found him a place at a boys' school then known as Browne & Nichols, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He later dropped out of school and changed his name to O. Onyango Obama. He has operated a liquor store in Framingham, where he resided as of March 2011. Barack Obama lived with Onyango in the 1980s while a student at Harvard Law School in Cambridge.
In the book Wise argues that the election of Barack Obama did not signal the end of racism in America, writing that his political success could instead "deepen the denial in which so much of the white public has been embedded for generations."
Paternal grandfather to Barack Obama, he was born Onyango Obama. (One source gives 1870–1975 as his dates of birth and death, possibly based on his tombstone in his home village. Barack Obama relates finding in 1988 a British document, based on a 1928 ordinance, recording his grandfather as 35 years old. The date of the document was estimated to be about 1930, which would mean that his grandfather had been born around 1895.) The Luo are given names related to the circumstances of their birth, and "Onyango" means "born in the early morning."Onyango was the fifth son of his mother, Nyaoke, who was the first of the five wives of his father, Obama. Barack Obama relates how his step-grandmother Granny Sarah (Sarah Onyango Obama) describes his grandfather: "Even from the time that he was a boy, your grandfather Onyango was strange. It is said of him that he had ants up his anus, because he could not sit still." As a young man, Onyango learned to speak, read and write in English, the language of British colonial administration in Kenya. Onyango worked as a mission cook and as a local herbalist. He joined the King's African Rifles during World War I. In 1949, Onyango spent at least six months in Kamiti Prison. He was probably tried in a magistrates' court on charges of sedition or being a member of a banned organization. Records do not survive; all such documentation was routinely destroyed after six years by the British colonial administration. He was tortured to extract information about the growing insurgency seeking the independence of Kenya. In his memoir, Obama recounted family descriptions of his grandfather's shocking physical state when released from prison:
"When he returned to Alego he was very thin and dirty. He had difficulty walking, and his head was full of lice." For some time, he was too traumatized to speak about his experiences. His wife told his grandson Obama: "From that day on, I saw that he was now an old man." Onyango was permanently scarred, suffering pain and requiring assistance in moving until his death. Although previously he had worked closely with British colonists, Onyango became bitterly anti-British after his abuse. According to his third wife, Sarah, Onyango had converted from tribal religion to Catholicism early in life. When Seventh-day Adventist missionaries visited the Kendu Bay area many people were baptized into the church, including Onyango. When he later converted to Islam, he took the first name "Hussein." She said that he passed on the name of Hussein to his children, but not the religion. Onyango is sometimes referred to as Mzee Hussein Onyango Obama. The word "mzee" (meaning "elder") is a Kenyan honorific. And to this day the Obama family in Kenya is divided between Seventh-day Adventists and Muslims.
Ruben Figueres is an American consultant. He worked with Barack Obama during his United States presidential campaign. In 2015 he published an autobiography and his reflections on the Obama campaign titled "De Gandia a la Casa Blanca," which translates to "From Gandia to the White House."
In August 2011, Republican Congressman Michael C. Burgess of Texas agreed with a rally audience member that the impeachment of Barack Obama "needs to happen" in order to prevent Obama from "pushing his agenda". Burgess did not mention any grounds for impeachment.
The following is a timeline of the presidency of Barack Obama, from January 1, 2014 to December 31, 2014. For his time as President-elect, see the Presidential transition of Barack Obama; for a detailed account of his first months in office, see First 100 days of Barack Obama's presidency; and for a complete itinerary of his travels, see List of presidential trips made by Barack Obama.