Dreams From My Father
A Story of Race and Inheritance
by Barack Obama
 
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance was originally meant to focus on Obama’s road to becoming the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review as well as a reflection on the efforts of civil rights litigation sprinkled with personal anecdotes, but the autobiography took a different direction. Obama felt that the best way to explain the landscape of race was through the stages of his life in two worlds. Through a unique journey, he reflects on the image he created of his absent father and how that absence, along with his unusual childhood, played a role in coming to grips with race and his own place in the world.
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The Survivor
Bill Clinton in the White House
By John F. Harris
  
America’s 42nd president, William J. Clinton, possessed impressive strengths and many weaknesses. He is one of the most charismatic and enigmatic political figures of the last 50 years. In The Survivor, Harris appraises Clinton’s background and aspirations to explain many of the President’s frequent shifts in direction, including health care reform, welfare reform, his stance on terrorism and other foreign policy matters. Despite Clinton’s personal failings in office, even his detractors must recognize the remarkable statistics of his term: the lowest unemployment rate in modern times, the lowest inflation in 30 years, the highest home ownership in the country's history, dropping crime rates and reduced welfare roles. Clinton also balanced the budget and achieved a budget surplus. Harris follows Clinton from his first fumbling years in office to a relatively triumphant exit from office. 
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