A Race to the Finish Line

Occasionally, a great manuscript is written about someone great, and that great manuscript is A Race to the Finish Line, and that someone great is Barack Hussain Obama, the first African American to be elected president of the United States of America.Rose's work is a brilliant analysis of the struggles that Barrack Obama overcame to reach the Oval Office and as the commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces in the United States. The book is intellectually stimulating and insightful. It chronicles Obama's life from birth and examines the forces that shaped his life and made him the forty-fourth president of the United States. It explains how Obama defeated three renowned, admired, and experienced politicians--former first lady and Senator Hillary Clinton, former prisoner of war and Senator John McCain, and former Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney--to become president of the United States.Rose's work presents fresh insights into Obama's life--from his birth in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961, to Seattle and then Jakarta, Indonesia. The book is a definitive account of Barack Obama's formative years, which made him the man he became. After graduating from Punahou School, a private, elite all-white academy in Honolulu, the young Obama entered Occidental College in Los Angeles, California, and after two years, he transferred to Columbia University, an Ivy League college in New York City, and to Harvard University Law School, where he was elected as the first African American president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.Dr. Rose's penetrating and captivating work describes Barack Obama's tumultuous upbringing as a young man of mixed race who was raised almost exclusively by his white grandparents, his marriage to Michelle Robinson in Chicago in 1992, and his work as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004, and serving as a US senator from 2004 to 2008 when he was elected President of the United States. The book reveals that Occidental College has had a profound impact on Obama's life, because according to him, it was at Occidental College that he took life seriously and was awakened to the notion that he could make a difference in the world.Rose's epic work is a rich tapestry of a life little known or understood prior to his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, which instantly catapulted him into the national spotlight.The book is a classic narrative drawn from hundreds of interviews, including several of President Obama's advisers, friends, and classmates and a trove of articles, journals, and other documents. It tells the human story of a man--Barack Hussain Obama--who changed the course of history and the world in a way that no one else can and no one expected. As a result, he is considered one of the most significant figures of the twenty-first century.It is a groundbreaking and multigenerational manuscript; a richly textured account of President Obama's life from childhood to adulthood as he tried to make sense of his past, established his own identity as he prepared for his political future. It is a beautifully written and powerful book that captured Barack Obama's time as a community organizer in one of Chicago City's roughest neighborhoods as he grappled with the role that faith has in store for him.It is a fascinating account about a young man born into uncommon family and perhaps unusual circumstances--son of a black man from Kenya, Africa, and a white woman from the state of Kansas in the United States. It is a first-rate account of the human struggles of one of the most interesting and exciting presidents of our time, Barack Hussain Obama.

-- Dr. Euclid A. Rose PhD