The Audacity of Hope

Barack Obama's book The Audacity of Hope was a real revelation for me. His honesty and vision for America shone through. To me it felt like a remarkable honest book by someone who seems to genuinely want to do good.

This is Barack Obama's second book - I have not read his first one and after reading this one, am dying to read the first one. He comes through as very level headed and astute. The ideas and the policy positions that he has outlined in the book makes very interesting reading and gives an insight into the issues that Americans are facing now. The most interesting part is that the ideas that Obama has outlined could very well be applied to most countries. Education, health care and energy, for instance, are issues facing most countries in some measure.

After seeing the way our Indian politicians behave - Obama was very, very impressive and refreshing. He has analysed very sensibly what was done wrong during the Bush Administration and the measures that he thinks, could help change things. The best part is that he sounds very balanced , not resorting to any kind of negativism towards anyone and at the same time, coming up with sensible sounding solutions.

There are some interesting snippets from his meetings with various personalities like the US President George W. Bush and Warren Buffett, which add a lot of flavour.

One of the chapters in his book is Faith and to be honest - it was a huge revelation to me. I did not know the extent to which Faith is a factor in American politics. There are instances where he is made to look like a person of no 'faith' because he is pro-abortion. It is amazing that faith plays such an important role in American politics. For instance in India - religion has become part of politics but 'faith' as such, is not. We never hear of one politician accusing another of not being 'Hindu enough' or 'Muslim enough'. Although I guess, India has enough trouble with religion alone , without needing the extra element of faith.

All in all, I really enjoyed Barack Obama's writing style and a lot of things gave me an insight to American politics. I really look forward to seeing him elected President and then hopefully, we will get to see a new , responsible America as opposed to Big Bully America.