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Keith and Tony Peterson were rummaging through the discount bin at a bookstore in Boulder, Colo. Their friend from Punahou School. They both bought copies and raced through the memoir, absorbed by the story and especially by the sections on their high school years. They did not recognize any of the names, since they were all pseudonyms, but they recognized the smells and sounds and sensibility of the chapters and the feelings Obama expressed as he came of age as a black teenager.
This was their story, too. They wondered why Obama focused so much on a friend he called Ray, who in fact was Keith Kukagawa. Kukagawa was black and Japanese, and the Petersons did not even think of him as black. Yet in the book, Obama used him as the voice of black anger and angst, the provocateur of hip, vulgar, get-real dialogues. Keith Peterson had felt the same way, without being fully able to articulate his unease. It was a connection. It was amazing as I read this book, so many decades later, at last I was feeling a certain amount of closure, having felt so isolated for so long.
I spent a good portion of my life thinking I had experienced something few others had. I was not the only one struggling with some of these issues. But his brother Tony, who reached Punahou first, said he had regular discussions with Obama about many issues, including race. Tony was a senior when Obama was a freshman. The Petersons lived miles away, out in Pearl City, having grown up in a military family that was first based at Schofield Barracks. While Obama walked only five blocks to school, Tony had to ride city buses for an hour and a half each morning to get there. Peterson, Smith and Obama would meet on the steps outside Cooke Hall for what, with tongue in cheek, they called the Ethnic Corner.
Obama and Smith were biracial, one black and white, the other black and Indian. That is one thing we talked about.
We talked about time. We talked about our classes. We talked about girls. We talked specifically about whether girls would date us because we were black. We talked about social issues. But our little chats were not agonizing. They were just sort of fun. We were helping each other find out who we were. We talked about what we were going to be. I was going to be a lawyer. Rick was going to be a lawyer. And Barry was going to be a basketball player. Now it was his obsession. He was always dribbling, always playing, either on the outdoor courts at Punahou or down at the playground on King Street across from the Baskin-Robbins where he worked part-time.
He was a flashy passer with good moves to the basket but an uneven and unorthodox jump shot, pulling the ball back behind his head so far that it almost disappeared behind him. Basketball dominated his time so much that his mother worried about him. In ninth grade, at least, he was the naive one, believing he could make a life in the game. All those Ethnic Corner trips to the snack bar and playing ball made the year a lot more enjoyable, even though the snack bar trips cost me a fortune.
Anyway, great knowing you and I hope we keep in touch. Good luck in everything you do, and get that law degree. Her understanding of race was far deeper than that joke; she was always sensitive to issues of identity and made a point of inculcating her children in the cultures of their fathers. Still, there were some problems she could not resolve for them.
She wanted us to think of it as a gift that we were multilayered and multidimensional and multiracial. This meant that she was perhaps unprepared when we did struggle with issues of identity. She was not really able to help us grapple with that in any nuanced way. I remember Mom wanting it not to be an issue. In an apparent effort to show a lifelong plot to power, some opponents last year pushed a story about Obama in which he predicted in kindergarten that one day he would be president.
The conspiracy certainly seemed to go off the rails by the time he reached high school. Unlike Bill Clinton, who was the most political animal at Hot Springs High in Arkansas — organizing the marching band as though it was his own political machine, giving speeches at the local Rotary, maneuvering his way into a Senate seat at the American Legion-sponsored Boys Nation — Obama stayed away from student leadership roles at Punahou and gave his friends no clues that a few decades later he would emerge as a national political figure. In a school of high achievers, he coasted as a B student.
He dabbled a little in the arts, singing in the chorus for a few years and writing poetry for the literary magazine, Ka Wai Ola. The group he ran with was white, black, brown and not identified with any of the traditional social sets at the school: Did we defer to Barry?
It was a very egalitarian kind of thing, also come as you are. And they smoked dope. He acknowledged smoking marijuana and using cocaine but said he stopped short of heroin. Some have suggested that he exaggerated his drug use in the book to hype the idea that he was on the brink of becoming a junkie; dysfunction and dissolution always sell in memoirs. But his friends quickly dismissed that notion.
Do I remember specifically? Punahou was a wealthy school with a lot of kids with disposable income. The drinking age in Hawaii then was 18, so a lot of seniors could buy it legally, which means the parent dynamic was not big. And the other partying materials were prevalent, being in Hawaii. There was a lot of partying that went on. And Barack has been very open about that. Coming from Hawaii, that would have been so easy to expose. His signature move was a double-pump in the lane. This did not serve him well on the Punahou varsity team. His coach, Chris McLachlin, was a stickler for precisely where each player was supposed to be on the court and once at practice ordered his team to pass the ball at least five times before anyone took a shot.
He never won the arguments, and the team did well enough anyway. Obama came off the bench to score two points. So much for the dream of becoming a rich NBA star. His senior year, his mother was back home from Indonesia and concerned that her son had not sent in his college applications. In their tensest confrontation in the memoir, he eggs her on by saying it that was no big deal, that he might goof off and stay in Hawaii and go to school part-time, because life was just one big crapshoot anyway.
She had rebelled herself once, at his very age, reacting against her own parents — and perhaps against luck and fate — by ignoring their advice and getting pregnant and marrying a man she did not know the way she thought she did. Now she was telling her son to shape up, that he could do anything he wanted if he put in the effort. Sixteen years later, Barry was no more, replaced by Barack, who had not only left the island but had gone to two Ivy League schools, Columbia undergrad and Harvard Law, and written a book about his life. He was into his Chicago phase, reshaping himself for his political future, but now was drawn back to Hawaii to say goodbye to his mother.
Too late, as it turned out. She died on Nov. She was weakened from a cancer that had been misdiagnosed in Indonesia as indigestion. American doctors first thought it was ovarian cancer, but an examination at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York determined that it was uterine cancer that had spread to her ovaries. Stan had died a few years earlier, and Madelyn still lived in the apartment on Beretania. Ann took an apartment on the same floor, and underwent chemotherapy treatments while keeping up with her work as best she could.
Her dissertation, published in , was a masterwork of anthropological insight, delineating in 1, pages the intricate world of peasant metalworking industries in Indonesia, especially traditional blacksmithing, tracing the evolution of the crafts from Dutch colonialism through the regime of General Suharto, the Indonesian military strongman. Her deepest work was done in Kajar, a blacksmithing village near Yogyakarta. In clear, precise language, she described the geography, sociology, architecture, agriculture, diet, class structure, politics, business and craftsmanship of the village, rendering an arcane subject in vivid, human terms.
It was a long time coming, the product of work that had begun in , but Dewey said it was worth the wait: Each chapter as she turned it in was a polished jewel. She had also worked in Lahore, Pakistan; New Delhi; and New York, helping to develop microfinancing networks that provided credit to female artisans in rural communities around the world. This was something she had begun in Jakarta for the Ford Foundation in the early s, when she helped refine Bank Rakyat, set up to provide loans to farmers and other rural entrepreneurs in textiles and metalwork, the fields she knew best.
David McCauley, who worked with her then, said she had earned a worldwide reputation in the development community. She had a global perspective from the ground up, he said, and she passed it along to her children, Barack and Maya. Maya was in New York, about to start graduate school at New York University, when her mother got sick. She and her brother were equally slow to realize that the disease was advancing so rapidly. She was in a wheelchair. I knew that someday she would die, but it never occurred to me that it would be in November.
I think children are capable of stretching out the boundaries of denial. But by November her condition had worsened. She was put on morphine to ease the pain and moved from her apartment to the Straub Clinic. One night she called Maya and said she was scared. I arrived on the seventh. My grandmother was there and had been there for some time, so I sent her home and talked to Mom and touched her and hugged her, and she was not able to respond.
It was about 11 that night.
Barack came the next day. He had just finished a book about his missing father, but now it was more clear to him than ever that his mother had been the most significant force in shaping his life. Even when they were apart, she constantly wrote him letters, softly urging him to believe in himself and to see the best in everyone else. A small memorial service was held in the Japanese Garden behind the East-West Center conference building on the University of Hawaii campus. Photographs from her life were mounted on a board: They recalled her spirit, her exuberance and her generosity, a worldliness that was somehow very fresh and naive, maybe deliberately naive, sweet and unadulterated.
And her deep laugh, her Midwestern sayings, the way she loved to collect batiks and wear vibrant colors and talk and talk and talk. About 20 people made it to the service. This was where Ann wanted them to toss her ashes. She felt connected to Hawaii, its geography, its sense of aloha, the fact that it made her two children possible — but the woman who also loved to travel wanted her ashes to float across the ocean.
Barack and Maya stood together, scattering the remains. The others tossed flower petals into the water. Suddenly, a massive wave broke over the ironing board and engulfed them all. A sign at the parking lot had warned visitors of the dangers of being washed to sea. Barack Obama left Hawaii soon after and returned to his Chicago life. I bought the video on a visit to Occidental College in Los Angeles, not long after Obama took office. He attended Oxy from to , then lit out after his sophomore year and never returned.
During my visit the campus was transforming itself into a three-dimensional tribute to its most famous dropout. In the common room of the library a shrine of sorts had been set up in a glass display case, under the famous Shepard Fairey Hope poster. Every item on display was derivative and indirect in its relation to the man being honored.
There were photos of three of his professors, a copy each of his two memoirs, an invitation that someone had received to his inauguration, and an issue of Time magazine showing a recently discovered cache of posed pictures taken of Obama by a classmate in You see a figure traveling lightly and swiftly over the surface of things, darting away before he could leave an impression that might last. Archivists have combed college records and come up empty, mostly. Barry Obama, as he then was known, published two poems in the campus literary magazine his sophomore year.
The testimony of the handful of professors who remembered him, four by my count, is hazy. Perhaps Obama is included? The film, with a cover showing a rare photo of Obama on campus, lasts no more than 15 minutes and seems padded even so. Our host is a large and enthusiastic man named Huell Howser. He sports a Hawaiian shirt and a crewcut. With an Oxy flack as guide and a cameraman in tow, he strides the sun-drenched campus and pauses here and there as if simply overwhelmed. On the steps of the school administration building they are almost struck dumb.
He finds a professor who taught Obama political science. The professor says he remembers Obama, but only because of his Afro hairstyle and his improbable name. The man gives one of those nods that are more headshake than nod. And there we are. They faced a challenge known to anyone who tries to account for Barack Obama: How do you turn him into a man as interesting and significant as the world-historical figure that so many people, admirers and detractors alike, presume him to be?
Obama had an unusual though hardly Dickensian childhood complicated by divorce, and at age 33 he wrote an extremely good book about it, the memoir Dreams from My Father. He followed it with an uneventful and weirdly passive career in politics, and he wrote an extremely not-very-good book about it, The Audacity of Hope. Then, lacking any original ideas or platform to speak of, he ran as the first half-black, half-white candidate for president and, miraculously, won.
There are two ways to aggrandize Obama, to inflate the reality so that it meets the expectation: Pure Obama-hatred was enough to shoot the book to the top of the Times bestseller list for the first three weeks after its release. Klein is best known as a Kennedy-watcher, author of such panting chronicles as All Too Human: A Portrait of Her Final Days; among the many info-bits he has tossed onto the sprawling slagheap of Kennedy lore is the news that Jackie lost her virginity in an elevator the elevator was in Paris, where else.
And you believe it? I wonder if they met in a darkened garage. Blind quotes appear on nearly every page; there are blind quotes within blind quotes.
With such thin material, the only way to keep a book like The Amateur chugging along is with gallons of high-octane contempt. A few pages later Obama and Valerie Jarrett are accused of ignoring their old Chicago friends—a sign of coldness and amateurism. Klein is an Obama despiser, Maraniss is a big fan—big fan.
Klein assumes the worst of his subject at every turn, Maraniss gives Obama every benefit of the doubt, sometimes with heroic effort. Klein writes hastily and crudely, Maraniss writes with great care, veering now and then into those pastures of purple prose that Obama frequently trod in his own memoir.
It is not, however, the book that Obama lovers will hope for—maybe not the book that Maraniss thinks it is. I Googled it today and got , hits, pardon the expression. In Dreams, he treats the drug use as another symptom of his singular youthful confusion. Obama really, really liked to get high. Maraniss hints at a darker, even slightly menacing figure. Years before Obama haters could inflate him into an America-destroying devil or Obama worshippers spied those rolling swells of greatness that have yet to surface, Barack Obama was carefully fashioning from his own life something grander than what was there.
He was the first Obama fabulist. Obama himself drops hints of this in Dreams. All of this is offered to the reader as acceptable literary license, and it is, certainly by the standards of the early s, back in the day when publishers flooded bookstores with memoirs of angst-ridden youth and there were still bookstores to flood. Maraniss demonstrates something else: The writer who would later use the power of his life story to become a plausible public man was making it up, to an alarming extent. At least it should be alarming to admirers of Dreams.
Early on Obama signals that his book will be more self-aware, more detached and ironical, than most youthful memoirs, especially those involving the humid subject of race. Thus we meet Ray, a classmate at Punahou School in Hawaii.
How do you turn him into a man as interesting and significant as the world-historical figure that so many people, admirers and detractors alike, presume him to be? Le roman national est-il devenu un tabou? Sawyers has the better, more satisfying role, partly because of who he plays, though also because Barack is more complex and vulnerable. Then after they were excoriated for their statements by Jews and conservatives, they changed their tune. Canteen cantine -f soldier's bidon. To go to l.
We were in goddamned Hawaii. The white girls refuse to go out with them—for the same reason. Racial resentment is the key to Ray. He provides a crucial example of the resentment that Obama is tempted by but at last outgrows. His mother was half-black and half-American Indian; his father was. With a Japanese name, Kakugawa would have trouble—more trouble than half-black Barry Obama—identifying himself as an African American and speaking as one.
Maraniss cuts Obama much more slack than he would, say, if he were an editor at the Washington Post magazine fact-checking a memoir he hoped to publish. Many freshmen have known the feeling. But then Barry Obama meets Regina. The two are introduced by a mutual friend, Marcus, in the campus coffee shop. She asks him about the name Barry—and becomes, in a liberating moment, one of the first to call him by his given name, Barack.
The afternoon with Regina transforms Barack. Regina, Maraniss thinks, was the combination of a wealthy white girl there were lots of them at Oxy, then and now, none overly familiar with the authentic black American experience and a female black upperclassman who grew up middle class. The background, Maraniss says, may have been drawn from Michelle Robinson later Obama , whom Obama would not meet for another 10 years.
And even then the facts are obscured: Take this spat between Regina and Barry, occurring the evening after his big antiapartheid speech, given on those steps that years later would wow Huell Howser:. Regina came up to me and offered her congratulations. I asked her what for. You spoke from the heart, Barack. It made people want to hear more. Without them not much is left: It made for a story, anyway. We can see the dilemma he faced. Obama signed a contract to write a racial memoir.
They were all the rage in those days, but in fact their moment had passed. Even with the distant father and absent mother, the schooling in Indonesia and the remote stepfather, Obama lived a life of relative ease. He moved, however uncomfortably, into one elite institution after another, protected by civil rights laws, surrounded by a popular culture in which the African-American experience has embedded itself ineradicably. He did in effect what so many of us have done with him. He created a fable about an Obama far bigger and more consequential than the unremarkable man at its center.
Andrew Ferguson is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard. The shaping of a president: But it is significant in history because along for much of that weaving was a little boy and young man who was shaped by following her through her world, and now that man shapes our world as the leader of its most powerful nation. The senior Obama is portrayed as brilliant stopping just short of earning a doctorate in economics from Harvard in three years , driven, charismatic, but also arrogant and abusive both psychologically and physically.
And, as he grew older, all of his less endearing traits were magnified by a deepening relationship with alcohol. Maraniss suggests it was lucky for his son that Barack Obama Sr. The real story is Stanley Ann, named, some say, after her father Stanley Dunham, though Maraniss advances a more or less convincing theory that it was really her mother, Madelyn, who named her after a character in a B movie played by Bette Davis. Madelyn Payne Dunham of small-town Kansas longed for sophistication. Bette Davis personified it, and the film in which Davis played a woman named Stanley seemed to embody the bold breaking loose of convention that Madelyn wanted and that was passed along to her daughter.
Near the end of the campaign, Barack Obama canceled what would have been a massive Madison rally so he could return to Hawaii and be at her side in her final days. Along the way, Dunham acquires a college degree and works a series of academic odd jobs on her way to a Ph. The senior Barack Obama is eventually killed in a car accident fueled by alcohol, but by that point it hardly matters. His contribution to history is his genes, all nature, no nurture.
The nurturing role belonged mostly to Stanley Ann. Maraniss shows us in intricate detail how the personality of the president was shaped. How a young boy of high intelligence and good humor adapted to his constantly changing and sometimes odd surroundings, learning, absorbing, finding a way to get along and to blend in, but also staying apart, since he never knew what was around the next corner with his footloose mom. Barack Obama may be one of the least qualified men ever to occupy his office. His experience on the national stage amounts to four years as a junior U.
And yet, thanks to his mother, there were few who understood the world better. His face is a map of the world. Maraniss proves conclusively that the president is not a Muslim, but reveals he is French. For Rush Limbaugh conservatives, which is worse? Not only did he grow up in Indonesia and Hawaii, but he also grew up amid diversity in both places, which brought him into casual, daily contact with Africans, Asians, Natives and Caucasians, people of all kinds of ethnic variations and political and social differences. What he did not experience in his early life is mainland, American-style racism.
Growing up in places that were diverse, he never had to confront his identity as a black man until his college years. There are no slaves in the Obama family tree, and he missed most of the tumultuous civil rights struggle because of his youth and the physical distance from the mainland. Even when Barry, which is how he was known, finally made it to the mainland as a college freshman, he chose elite Occidental College in Los Angeles, a diverse environment in a sheltered section of the city that gave him virtually no taste of the typical experience of blacks in America.
He had to discover his blackness. This sets him apart from the dominant African American experience, and it accounts for some of the reluctance on the part of veteran civil rights advocates like Jesse Jackson to embrace his candidacy early on. The feeling was apparently mutual. As a student at Columbia, Obama saw Jackson speak at a rally and came back unimpressed. The argument can be made that Barack Obama, raised by a white mother and white grandparents, is half white genetically and more than that culturally.
But the reality of race in America is that skin color trumps everything. It is not, still and sadly, the content of your character that shapes how you are perceived, at least initially. That incident happened while the most important person in his life, his mother, was off doing her graduate research in Indonesia.
And even in death in , at the age of 52, she had an impact on her son. Her struggle with cancer was a theme he used often as he argued for a health care overhaul. Neither strikes me as all that important compared to the narrative surrounding Stanley Ann. Maraniss forgives most of the discrepancies as poetic license that Obama admits to at the start of his memoir. But his character had already been shaped by his experiences with his mother and grandparents. By the time we meet the girlfriends, they are reporting on what we already know. The book also wanders into countless narrative cul de sacs, detailing the lives, and sometimes the deaths, of people who have only a tangential relationship to Obama.
Maraniss is a reporter and editor for The Washington Post. He grew up in Madison and spends his summers here, where he wrote much of the book. The Story, if only to marvel at the twists and spellbinding turns in the life of the girl named Stanley who shaped — almost entirely for the better — the personality of the most powerful human being on the planet. Dave Cieslewicz is the former mayor of Madison. Back in , Oprah Winfrey admitted to feeling embarrassed after learning that James Frey, whose memoir she had praised and promoted, fabricated many of his life stories.
And as we would expect from a woman who rose from poverty to build a powerful media empire, Oprah did not take this sitting down. She invited Frey back on her show to confront him face-to-face. The interview, for anyone who missed it, was not for the faint of heart. Throughout the interview, Oprah supplied a healthy serving of indignation and anger to a hapless Mr. So if Oprah and much of the media had this strong a reaction to misrepresentations made by a previously unknown man who was just trying to make his life story sound a little exciting, one can only imagine how strong her reaction would be to a politician who was misrepresenting his life story to further his political career.
Which brings us to our president. Not only did she invite Obama on her show to discuss his memoir, Dreams from My Father, but in , even before he officially entered the presidential race, Oprah publicly endorsed Obama for president. Without them not much is left[. He explains that all the episodes in Dreams where Obama faced any character defining struggle were simply made up; the conversations never happened, and the characters never existed.
In fact, conservative writers and bloggers have been noting many of these inconsistencies and misstatements for the past couple of years. The only difference is that as an editor of the Washington Post, Maraniss is too prominent a liberal for the media to ignore. Indeed, many of these fabrications have been covered by news media outlets such as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Buzzfeed since his book was published. So he did what Frey did and turned an otherwise mundane life story into a more meaningful and interesting one.
Ever since she did so, her career has been in a steep decline. That is, if she could even stand to talk to him at this point. Ayers has admitted bombing the U. Ayers only avoided conviction when the evidence against him turned out to be contained in illegally obtained wiretaps by the FBI. He was, in fact, guilty as sin. That Obama should ally himself with Ayers is almost beyond understanding. The former terrorist had not repented of his views and the education grants he got were expressly designed to further them. His chief financial supporter was Tony Rezko, now on his way to federal prison.
His spiritual adviser and mentor was the Rev. Since Obama is asking us to let him direct education spending by the federal government and wants us to trust his veracity, these are difficulties he will have to explain in order to get the votes to win. Now that Obama is comfortably ahead in the polls, attention will understandably shift to him. We will want to know what kind of president he would make. The fact that, within the past 10 years, he participated in a radical program of political education conceptualized by an admitted radical terrorist offers no reassurance.
Why did Obama put up with Ayers? Why did he hang out with Jeremiah Wright? Because he was new in town, having grown up in Hawaii and Indonesia and having been educated at Columbia and Harvard, and needed all the local introductions he could get to jump-start his political career. Why was he so close to Rezko? Not a good recommendation for a president. Pollak Breitbart 4 Jun Senate—in the form of a now-scrubbed blog post placing Obama at the home of Ayers and his wife, fellow radical Bernardine Dohrn, on July 4, He wrote at 8: I spent the 4th of July evening with star Democrat Barack Obama!
Obama was at a barbecue at the house next door given by a law professor who is a former member of the Weather Underground and we saw him over the fence at our barbecue. Well, the others did. It had started raining and he had gone inside be the time I got there. Perrin did not respond. He did, however, delete his entire blog from the Internet. Of course, Breitbart News had saved a screen grab of the blog beforehand:. Senator—at the Ayers barbecue has been confirmed by another source, who told Breitbart News: LaBolt said the men first met in through the education project, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and have encountered each other occasionally in public life or in the neighborhood.
He said they have not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Mr. Obama began serving in the United States Senate in January and last met more than a year ago when they bumped into each other on the street in Hyde Park. Obama and Ayers may not have emailed or spoken by phone, but they had, we now know, spoken face to face—at least on July 4, , and perhaps at other times as well. His intellectual and political roots remain extreme. Stanley Kurtz National Review June 7, On the evening of January 11, , while Mitt Romney was in the final years of his run as the head of Bain Capital, Barack Obama formally joined the New Party, which was deeply hostile to the mainstream of the Democratic party and even to American capitalism.
In , candidate Obama deceived the American public about his potentially damaging tie to this third party. Barack Obama, candidate for State Senate in the 13th Legislative District, gave a statement to the membership and answered questions. He also joined the New Party. Consistent with this, a roster of the Chicago chapter of the New Party from early lists Obama as a member, with January 11, , indicated as the date he joined.
The group was notorious in for thug tactics, fraudulent voter registrations, and its role in popularizing risky subprime lending. So why not simply confess the tie and make light of it? Although Obama is ultimately responsible for deceiving the American people in about his political background, he got help from his old associates. Obama formally requested New Party endorsement, signed the candidate contract, and joined the party. The notion is implausible. Nearly three decades ago, Barack Obama stood out on the small campus of Occidental College in Los Angeles for his eloquence, intellect and activism against apartheid in South Africa.
Obama, then known as Barry, also joined in the party scene. Obama, of Illinois, has never quantified his illicit drug use or provided many details. He wrote about his two years at Occidental, a predominantly white liberal arts college, as a gradual but profound awakening from a slumber of indifference that gave rise to his activism there and his fears that drugs could lead him to addiction or apathy, as they had for many other black men.
That could suggest he was so private about his usage that few people were aware of it, that the memories of those who knew him decades ago are fuzzy or rosier out of a desire to protect him, or that he added some writerly touches in his memoir to make the challenges he overcame seem more dramatic. In more than three dozen interviews, friends, classmates and mentors from his high school and Occidental recalled Mr. Obama as being grounded, motivated and poised, someone who did not appear to be grappling with any drug problems and seemed to dabble only with marijuana.
Obama in college, remembered him as a model of moderation — jogging in the morning, playing pickup basketball at the gym, hitting the books and socializing. Thummalapally, an Obama fund-raiser. Obama declined to be interviewed for this article. What seems clear is that Mr. He developed a sturdier sense of self and came to life politically, particularly in his sophomore year, growing increasingly aware of harsh inequities like apartheid and poverty in the third world. He also discovered that he wanted to be in a larger arena; one professor described Occidental back then as feeling small and provincial.
A place where I could put down stakes and test my commitments. Obama wrote that he learned of a transfer program that Occidental had with Columbia and applied. Obama and wrote him a recommendation for Columbia. He was a kid searching for answers and a place who had made some mistakes. Obama wrote in his memoir, he stopped getting high. In the page book, published when he was 33, Mr. He got the book contract after becoming the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. At first, he considered writing a more scholarly book about the law, race and society, but scrapped that in favor of writing about his search for identity.
The son of a white American mother and a black Kenyan father, Mr. Obama wrote that he would get high to help numb the confusion he felt about himself. At Punahou, a preparatory school that had few black students, Keith Kakugawa and Mr. Obama were close friends. A ffluent flowing freely affluent -f of a i river flowing into. Afflux rush of blood to the brain, etc.
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Appear has two meanings: Apparal- tre i is used personally of something unexpected, something striking. In sense ii the verbs are practically synonymous apparaitre excepted: Used impersonally sembler indicates less probability than the others, and is followed by the subjunctive, whereas paraitre takes the indicative. Paraitre and avoir I'air cannot be used in reference to mere appearance when there is no contrast to reality; use etre instead: To put in an a.
Apparition appearance see above ; apparition, vision; phantom. Application application of a principle, remedy, etc. Apply appliquer one thing to another, dressing to wound, ladder to wall, fig. Appoint fixer, donner, designer, marquer time and place, etc. Well-appointed of house, Qtc. Appointment fixation, designation, choix ; ordre, decret; rendez-vous; nomination to post ; office, emploi, charge ; fittings, etc.
Apprehender tQ fear; to arrest. Appropriation appropriation -h suiting, adaptation of discourse, to hearers, of language, etc. Apte f fitted for, qualified to do, s. Aptitude capacity penchant, gout, disposi- tion; aptitude, faculte, talents, moyens. Arche Noah's ark -I- arch, span of bridge. The English word is mainly used in poetry and of the pas- sions. Le navire est-il a.. Chapelle ardeute candles round a coffin. Armer to fit out ship ; to ship oars ; to cock gun ; to arm recruits, soldiers, etc. Arrangement see above ; arranging, adjustment; terms for board, etc. Arrestation, prise de corps; empechement, arret.
Arret in this sense is only used in a few expressions: English has the words come, reach, and happen, which may be used instead. In a few figurative expressions like 'a. Vine-shoot bent to increase fruitful- ness. Art 21 Assistant Art art -f- cunning artifice, adresse; pL, univ. I had neither a. Article article; item in accounts ; aa. Artifice artifice -j- pi. Artiste artist in any fine art. Asperite asperity as above -j- want of polish in style. Aspirateur aspirator 4- vacuum cleaner.
Assaillir assault - - bear down upon: Assaut assault -f- char d'a. Us ont fait a. Assent consentir, acquiescer, donner son assentiment. Assistant assistant professor, priest, doctor -f- aide, adjoint, assesseur; commis, employe, garcoii, demoiselle: Assume take into one's service, etc. A verbal construction will often be neces- sary: Asylum asile; hospice of the blind, of lunatics ; private maison de santi. Asile asylum; refuge, shelter, retreat, abode, sanctuary, home for the aged.
In England an officer, etc. The French say that he is detache aupres du general X. Attaquer attack -f legal a. Attend faire preter attention a, observer, ecouter ; turn mind or energies to s'occuper de, avoir egard a, vaquer a duties ; to serve, wait upon accom- pagner, servir; recevoir visitors ; watch over veiller sur t soigner ; assister, secourir; remplir duty ; to be attended by avoir pour consequence, entrainer ; to be present assister d, etre de service ; suivre, aller a lectures ; aller a school ; fever attended by accompagnee de shivering fremissements ; attended with suivi de consequences.
Attentive attentif, applique, soigneux, prudent; prevenant friend , plein d'egards, d'attentions [aux petits soins] pour qqn t courtois. Attentif attentive, careful, muidful. Circonstances attenuantes Ex- tenuating circumstances. Attest ass certify attester ; intrans. J'en atteste les dieux, I call the gods to witness. Austere austere -f- to the taste tfpre. IDauzat, cited by A. Le remede s'avera inoperant. Bachelier es lettres, s sciences, approx. To be always flirting, to be running after women.
Mettre qqn en liberU sous caution ; half-hoop for sup- porting wagon-tilt arceau; cricket bdtonnet; kettle anse; bat-flanc. Bandage bandeau; wounds bandage, pansement. Court of Queen's B. Cour du Bane de la reine. Bankrupt banqueroutier through negli- gence or fraud ; failli through mis- fortune. Baraque hovel, shanty, hut; booth fair. Baronnie barony -f barons collectively. Barrel baril beer, vine, flour, etc. Basque basque as above ; skirt, tail of man's coat ; roofing lead ; tambour de 6. Bassinet pan of flint-lock ; sconce for candles in church ; bot. Chacun sait oii le b.
Baton baton -h stick, cudgel ; staff ; trun- cheon; crozier; wand; pole, perch; spoke; straight stroke in writing , etc. Battle may sometimes victoire. Bazaar bazar oriental and large store or arcade -j- vente de charite. I Beak bee -f- ship eperon. Bee beak -f slang mouth; prow of boat; gas burner; peak of saddle ; spout, lip jug ; nib. As terms of abuse, animal, cochon, saligaud, abruti.
But 'That's the b. That is a b. With a vengeance, horribly, etc.: Benefice benefit, advantage; com. Benevolent bienveillant , bon; charitable f bienfaisant; society de bienfaisance. Benevole kind, gentle, easy-going; unpaid, voluntary worker: To give a wide b. J'irai au fait avec lui, sans prendre aucun 6. Skew of arch, of bridge , slant of wall: The French word means both the game and the table.
De but K 'b. Point-blank, on the spur of the moment, without reflection. To fire with blank cartridge. Tirer sitr le b. To incline to be white, whitish. Regarder qqn dans le b. Je ne te vois pas b. Donner carte blanche Give a free hand. Blanquette kind of white grapes or wine; veal or lamb stew; variety of pear. Blemirto turn pale; of light become dim, faint. Bless consacrer, sanctifier, benir food, etc.
To be blessed de, avoir le bonheur de posseder. Blinder to armour-plate a ship ; to case, pole, sheet, screen trenches, etc. Bloquer masonry fill up wall with rubble ; blockade fort, town, port ; stop a cheque ; printing turn a letter ; jam on brake ; lock wheels. Fidele a ses principes, etc. Drink till all 's 'b. Se soulerboire tout son soul. To have a fit of the bb.
Peter Pavilion de parlance.
Bluejacket Matelot t marin, fam. To be black and b. On I' a bombarde general. Bond bound, bounce; skip, leap, jump; gambol. Prendre la balle au b. To seize the opportunity. To have a bee in one's b. Opiner J du b. I Jeter son b. Bord ship board, side; edge, rim, brim, brink grave ; bank river ; strand, coast, shore sea ; hem dress ; fig. Avoir quelque chose au b. Bottle bouteille; small or stoppered flacon; wide-mouthed bocal; water carafe; stone cruchon; pilgrim's gourde.
Bontd goodness, kindness; attention; civility; favour; good nature; high quality excellence, goodness of material, of one's case. Box horse-box, loose box in stable ; lock-up garage. Swim hand over hand. Brassage droit de monnayage. Brassage mixing; mashing, brewing. The English word means coura- geous in facing danger. To stand in the b. Breche break, gap, opening, breach in hedge, wall, etc.
Notch in a blade. Bride bridle; reins; stay, check; strap, band; ribbons of bonnet. Brigadier generally foreman; cavalry corporal; police sergeant; bow-oar s- man. Broche two meanings, of which the second has many technical appli- cations: Brum The latter word, like some other French colours, requires care in translating. It is usually applied to darker shades than some English browns. In fact ' dark ' would often be its equivalent, and certainly so in teint brun. The Larousse du XX e siecle defines it as Qui a une couleur entre jaune, voux el noir, mais tirant sur le noir. Brusque sudden and violent attack ; sudden departure ; quick decision ; brusque manner and disposition.
Budget 32 Bout on Budget. The French have adopted this -word in its parliamentary sense, and also say Un budget de famille, but 'a b. Bugle clairon ; plant bugle ; grosse perle en verve. Danser dcvant le b. Bullion or, argent, en lingots. Bouton button, stud; of plants, etc. Cabaret wine-shop, public-house, tavern where wine, etc. Cabane shanty, hut; rabbit-hutch; awn- ing on river boat ; cabin on river barge. Duhamel, Defense des lettres, Paris, , p.
Cachtde'pdt secret of provisions, ammu- nition, etc. Cache hiding-place of person or thing ; photography mask for printing. Cadet cadet as above , younger, junior: Cadre frame, border; framework, limit, outline, cadre; naut. Caisson caisson as above -f seat-box of a carriage , locker naut. Calibre calibre of bore -j- gauge, size of ball, etc. Calquer trace drawings ; copy manners. It is also opposed to fortified places, and may mean field for manoeuvres and field of operations in war.
It means the land outside a town and the fields in opposition to the town. In a more restricted sense it means a country seat or small estate. There are some figurative and idiomatic meanings which deserve attention. Se mettre en c. To take the field; fig. Note also En pleine c.
Canon see above ; rifle barrel ; nozzle ; chemist's measuring-glass. Canteen cantine -f soldier's bidon. Canevas unbleached linen canvas; em- broidery netting; fig. I am dead in a poetical c. Capacite capaciousness, capacity; size, extent, reach; capability, ability, skill, talent, competency; qualification legal or educational. Capitate city or letter capital. Capon sneak, coward, tell-tale mainly in schools ; gambling den money- lender. Capote soldier's greaw-coat; woman's, baby's bonnet; car, carriage hood; chimney cowl.
Carbonize carboniser reduce to char- coal, coke -f convertir en carbone; car- bonized paper papier carbone. Cart 36 Cartckarrette, chariot; dust, refuse torn- bereau. To be in the c. Faire le carton de, caricaturer. Carton cardboard, pasteboard, carton as above ; binding boards ; printing cancel, half -sheet; pasteboard box or case, cardboard box ; band-box ; bonnet- box; portfolio. Chateau country mansion; royal resi- dence; in early times castle. Note also that ' C. Church ' means Toute la chretiente.
Catholique religion Roman Catholic 4- fam. Ce n'est pas c. It looks a bit fishy. Causer cause, produce, etc. Caution surety, security, bail; guar- antee, pledge; guarantor. Cave cellar, vault, cellaret; gambling money put up by each player at the beginning of the game. The English verb is used, as a rule, only in speaking of territory. Centre centre, milieu; archit. Chair flesh; meat; fig.
Chambre as above ; room, apartment; C. Chance chance, hasard; occasion; even- tualite, possibility: Have an eye to the main c. Eire sur le c. Bells To ring the cc. Change exchange, tit for tat; finance exchange, brokery.
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Channel canal, detroit [English C. Canal, as above -f-duct, canal of body ; gutter ; mill- race ; fluting, groove. Chanter 'To sing, extol, etc. Chapelle chapel; meeting-house; orna- ments and plate for the celebration of mass; maitre de c. Various technical uses crown of a baker's oven ; soupapes en c. Chapeletstring of beads; chaplet part of rosary. To have one's say pop. Get it off one's chest. Char a banes horse charabanc, wagon- ette. To give in c. Charge load, cargo, lading, freight; burden, quantity, number, charge see above.
Wit nesses for the prosecution; A dechargetvr the defence; tax, liability, expense; obliga- tion, duty; trust, care, custody; office, place, situation, post, employment, function ; public office ; lawyer's prac- tice ; orders, directions ; cure of souls ; caricature, parody, joke, trick; shot. Groove of a shuttle. To be of good c. Que sert la bonne c. Aimer la bonne c. Be fond of good living. Colere anger, wrath, ire, passion, fury. Chceur chorus -f church choir, chancel.
Chute chute d'eau, mpide in river -f glissiere. Cinder escarbilles, scories ; from a forge fraisil. Cercle circle -j- hoop, ring; club persons. Circuit circuit of a town, etc. Circus Roman ; arena for exhibitions ; amphitheatre of hills cirque; rond- point, place publique as Piccadilly Circus ; travelling show cirque. Citizen bourgeois [see this word]; citadin of a town, opp. Clack, Click, Crack, Clatter nn. All are onomatopoeic words, whose uses do not correspond in the two languages. Clack claqiter as of two pieces of wood ; caquet, caqueter of tongues. Click cliquetis; cliqucter of chains, swords, glasses, etc, ; clapper of tongue.
Crack claquer of whip. Caquet clucking of a hen ; chatter of people. Craquer of snow, boards, ice, boots, etc. Clamerto clamour, cry out. Reclamer implore, entreat; claim back, ask for, lay claim to; complain, protest; oppose, object; claim damages. Clerk in holy orders ecclesiastique, clerc; lay clerk repondant; secretaire; law court greffier; lawyer clerc; com. Faire un pas de c. Convenir de, s'entendre avec, s'en tenir a, con- sentiv a. Clore close securely, fence; terminate definitely a bargain, discussion, etc. Is used mainly in the past participle in certain phrases.
A huis clos In camera. Clos et convert Wind- and water-tight. La mouche du c. Busybody] ; nick, notch. Cock sss farmyard bird coq; birds in general mdle; weathercock giroucttc, coq; hay meulon, weulette ; tap robinet; gun chien ; sundial style; balance aiguille. Au cran de repos. Cog cock, rooster, weathercock; cook ship. Cogue shell, husk; hull; loop, kink; Jam. Euf a la c. Collier necklace; collar of animals and slaves ; hoop or ring of metal for various technical uses. Colloquer place anyhow in order to get rid of: Combinaison combination as above ; plan, scheme, contrivance; engineer's overalls, dungarees.
The French word is applied to any actor, whether tragic or comic. The English word applies to comic actors and, rarely, to writers of comedies auteur comique , but, loosely, it is applied nowadays to music-hall performers, or those who at one time would have been styled 'low comedians. The company of nations mutually practising international c. He has a wonderful c. Arranged to order, fig- forced, feigned; eccles. I am sorry if his methods don't c.
Parlez-moi de, donnez-moi de preference. Commode chest of drawers. Communaute community, society; reli- gious community; community of interests, etc. Commons peuple; tiers itat; "bourgeoisie. To be on short c. Communite community of possessions , ownership in common. Les recettes compensent les frais. II comprise ses defauts par de grandes qualites. Sa gloire etait au comble. Compromettre place in a critical posi- tion compromise [see last sense above], jeopardize; discredit; implicate, incul- pate; damage.
The English verb has the following equivalents: I am con- cerned in tMs matter Cette affaire m'interesse. Concert concert; agreement, arrange- ment, harmony; chorus of praises, etc. Close up; crowd of population. Confection making, preparation, execu- tion, drawing up; making up clothes , outfitting; a ready-made article of dress. Confidence disclosure of a secret con- fidence. Dire qqch en c.
Mettre qqn dans la. Une personne de c. Broadly speaking the two words have the same connota- tions, but in actual use the English word applies oftener to material dis- order and confusion. The latter is now used of marriage only. Conservatoire conservatory, conserva- toire [' In England, the French form of the word is commonly used ' N. Agrees V assurance de ma parfaite [haute] c. Consistence [solidity, firmness; degree of firmness or density: Law Extent, nature of property, inheritance, etc. Finance Funding of floating debt.
Constamment constantly, continually -j- with constancy, consistently, resolutely. Construction act, manner of construc- tion ; bdtiment, construction; geom. Consume consumer, consommer, manger, boire. Consomption consumption by fire, use, etc. Contenir contain 4- keep in check, con- trol, restrain. Contention tenseness, mental intent- ness. Conteste now occurs only in the phrase sans c. Circumstances beyond my c. Controle army register, roll, list; stamping, hall - marking ; superinten- dence, censorship, audit; inspection of tickets, etc.
Tout le monde en est c0mtewtt Everybody admitted it. Je suis convenu agreed avec lui du about the prix. At your earliest c. Convocation convocation -f assemblee church and universities. Convulse agiter violemment, bouleverser; pass. Montr er la c. N'ttre pas digne de denouev les cc. Be unworthy to unloose the latchet of s. He is getting a c. Corps material part of man or animal body ; trunk ; body of a garment ; the whole person person, fellow; corpse, dead body; matter, substance, reality; astron.
II est bourreau de son c. Passer sur le c. Avoir le diable au. Faire rentyer a qqn ses paroles dans le c. Avoir une mauvaise affaire sur le c. Grande-Bretagne, grande bretagne great grandfather: Grecque green vert green area: Chagriner, affliger, affligeons, affligent English-french Dictionary English-french dictionnaire grieved: P n b produit national gross weight: Guatemala English-french Dictionary English-french dictionnaire Guatemalan: P ic - hacher hackle: Crosse, manions, poignee, traiter, manient, maniez handlebar: Odieux, haie, haimes, hairent, hai, haies hateful: P ar consequent henchman pendentif her: P ar ici hereditarily: P ar ia suite heresy: P late forme highbred: Charitable, hurnain humanistic humaniste humanity humanite humble: Hongrois, Hongroise Hungarian lady: Yssel ill malade ill fate fatalite ill will malveillance illconsidered inconsidere illegal: Indien Indian corn mats indicate: Iranienne Iraq Irak Iraqi: Italie English-french Dictionary English-french dictionnaire italy: Jacob jade jade jag: Japon English-french Dictionary English-french dictionnaire Japanese: Japonais Japanese woman Japonaise jar: Jordanie, Jourdain journalist joumaliste journey: Kurde Kurdistan Kurdistan label: Laponne lapwing vanneau large: Letton, Letton Latvian woman: Leyde English-french Dictionary English-french dictionnaire leisure: Peripherie, longueur, etendue lengthen: Salle de sejour English-french Dictionary English-french dictionnaire lizard: P e rte, deperdition, perdition, dechet, coulage English-french Dictionary English-french dictionnaire loss of blood: P erte de sang loss of hair: P ost ai mail box: Mandchourie Manchurian mandchou mandarin mandarine mandate: Patron, maitriser, maitre, maitre, maitrisent mastered: Monaco monarch monarque monarchy: Mons English-french Dictionary English-french dictionnaire monster: Montenegro month mois monthly: Champignon de couche, champignon music: Nouvelle-Zelande, neo-zelandais New Zealander: Nimegue English-french Dictionary English-french dictionnaire Nile: Nil nimble a g ile Nimrod Nemrod Nimwegen: Normand Normandy Normandie north nord North: Objection, exception, reclamation objectionability: Obtenez, parvcnir, obtenons, procurer, obtiennent Obtainable: Obtinmes, obtenu, obtenues, obtenue, obtinrent obtaining: Par la suite oncavity: Orientent, orientons, orientez oriental: Chavirai, chavirees, chaviree, chavira, chavirames overturning: Paire English-french Dictionary English-french dictionnaire pair of pincers: Philippin Philippine woman Philippine Philippines: P la it pleasing plaisant pleasure: Polonaise English-french Dictionary English-french dictionnaire polished: P ol yp e pond: P r i x - houp, recompense probability: Obstruction, temporisation English-french Dictionary English-french dictionnaire procrastinator: P ro professional secret: Proton protuberance gibbosite protuberances: Obvier, approvisionnez, approvisionnons, pourvois provided: Chiffonent, chiffoner, ini ter, provoquons prOVOked: P ul P e pulpit: P om P e punch: P ur - pudique purgatory: P uiiste puritain puritain Puritanism: Pousse English-french Dictionary English-french dictionnaire pushing poussant pushoff: Chemin de fer, trajectoire English-french Dictionary English-french dictionnaire railroad embankment: I'cstons, rester, restent, restez remainder: Rhenanie rhone 'hone rhyme: Violence rowing aviron rOWS: Roumain Rumanian woman Roumaine ruminate: Russie Russian russe Russian woman: Chaussure de plage sandwich sandwich Sandy: Ecossais Scotswoman Ecossaise Scottish: P la ic, cingler SCOUt: Signalai, signale, signalees, signalee, signalames signaller: Signataire signature Signature Signed: Signifier, signifiez, signifient, signifions English-french Dictionary signifying: Simplifiez, simplifions, simplifier, simplified simplifying: