Wikipedia barack obama biography english

Barack Hussein Obama II (; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician and attorney. He was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. He was the first African-American president in U.S. history. A member of the Democratic Party, he also served as member of the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004 and a United States senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008.

Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. He married Michelle Robinson in 1992. They have two daughters, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama.

Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, as the first African American mixed-race president. As president, he slowly ended US participation in the Iraq War, having prepared the country to defend itself. The al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden was killed while Obama was in office. Also, he contributed to the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (often called "Obamacare") which changed many health care laws. He also enacted many acts to create public works jobs to help the economy. He be

David Garrow's 2017 biography of Barack Obama

Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama is a 2017 biography of former President of the United StatesBarack Obama by American author and academic David Garrow. It is Garrow's fifth book.

Background

Working on the book for nine years, Garrow interviewed Obama on several occasions for the book, though much of those conversations remain off the record.

Reception

The book was published by William Morrow on May 9, 2017, to mixed reviews. In The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani called the book "a dreary slog of a read: a bloated, tedious and — given its highly intemperate epilogue — ill-considered book that is in desperate need of editing, and way more exhausting than exhaustive." In Time, Sarah Begley said the book nevertheless did "contain intriguing insight into the growing pains of a 20-something who would go on to become the leader of the free world, most vividly in the form of letters he wrote to friends." The book also details an unpublished 1991 essay Obama co-wrote with law school classmate and economist Robert Fisher, in which they argue that black Americans should "shift away from rights rhetoric and towards the language of opportunity." In suggesting a lack of such opportunity, the essay mentioned businessman and future president Donald Trump:

[Americans have] a continuing normative commitment to the ideals of individual freedom and mobility, values that extend far beyond the issue of race in the American mind. The depth of this commitment may be summarily dismissed as the unfounded optimism of the average American—I may not be Donald Trump now, but just you wait; if I don't make it, my children will."

Rising Star debuted at number 14 on the New York Times bestseller list for hardcover non-fiction.^[12

Debunked conspiracy theories

"Birtherism" redirects here. For similar challenges against other people, see Natural-born-citizen clause (United States) § Eligibility challenges.

During Barack Obama's campaign for president in 2008, throughout his presidency and afterwards, there was extensive news coverage of Obama's religious preference, birthplace, and of the individuals questioning his religious belief and citizenship – efforts eventually known as the "birther movement", or birtherism, names by which it is widely referred to across media. The movement falsely asserted Obama was ineligible to be President of the United States because he was not a natural-born citizen of the United States as required by Article Two of the Constitution. Studies have found these birther conspiracy theories to be most firmly held by Republicans strong in both political knowledge and racial resentment.

Theories alleged that Obama's published birth certificate was a forgery – that his actual birthplace was not Hawaii but Kenya. Other theories alleged that Obama became a citizen of Indonesia in childhood, thereby losing his U.S. citizenship. Still others claimed that Obama was not a natural-born U.S. citizen because he was born a dual citizen (British and American). A number of political commentators have characterized these various claims as a racist reaction to Obama's status as the first African-American president of the United States.

These claims were promoted by fringe theorists (pejoratively referred to as "birthers"), including businessman and television personality Donald Trump, who would later succeed Obama as president. Some theorists sought court rulings to declare Obama ineligible to take office, or to grant access to various documents which they claimed would support such ineligibility; none of these eff

2007 German biography of Barack Obama

Barack Obama – Der schwarze Kennedy (English: Barack Obama – The black Kennedy) is a best-selling German-languagebiography of President of the United StatesBarack Obama by journalist Christoph von Marschall. The book was written by Marschall while he spent much of 2007 travelling with Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign as a reporter for the Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel. It covers Obama's life from his childhood, through his college years, his time as a community organizer in Chicago, Illinois, and his political career including his 2008 presidential campaign. Marschall sums up his impressions of Obama by saying, "Seine Lebensgeschichte steht für den amerikanischen Traum." ("His life story stands for the American Dream.")

The title of the book, which implies a close similarity between Obama and John F. Kennedy, seemed gimmicky to some people when it was published in December 2007. However, in the following months many other Germans compared the two men and expressed hope that an Obama presidency would bring better relations between the United States and Europe. Kennedy is very popular in Germany, with many recalling his famous statement, "Ich bin ein Berliner" ("I am a Berliner") – given in West Berlin in 1963 at the height of the Cold War. Steffen Hallaschka, a moderator for Germany's NDR TV, said: "Germans in the '60s projected a lot of hope and fantasies on Kennedy. This is what they are doing with Obama."

Barack Obama – Der schwarze Kennedy has been credited with helping to inspire interest in and support for Obama among people in Germany, with "der schwarze Kennedy" becoming a popular expression. Marschall, however, has pointed out in some interviews that Obama's Democratic Partyprimary rival Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, are also popular in Germany and in the rest of Europe.