The 100 best nonfiction books: No 5 – Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama (1995)

This remarkably candid memoir from the then junior senator of Illinois revealed not only a literary talent, but a force that would change the face of US politics for ever

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In the run-up to the 2008 US presidential election, that rollercoaster primary season in which Hillary Clinton was expected to play a starring, and possibly triumphant, role, I was commissioned by the Observer to review the campaign biographies of the principal Democratic and Republican contenders, a slate of candidates that ran the gamut of implausibility from John McCain and Mitt Romney to John Kerry, John Edwards and Joe Biden. Dismal as these politicians appeared to be on the campaign trail, their collected works made an even sorrier catalogue. All the books under review turned out to be either ghosted by party hacks, or “As told to”. Every last one of them was a farrago of wonkishness, insincerity, and cliche, polemical half-truths and bits of old stump speeches, mashed-up press releases and policy statements, reheated for popular consumption in some of the dullest American prose imaginable. Was it possible that none of the candidates had even read these books, let alone written them?

There was, however, an exception, a shaft of clarity and brilliance in the prevailing murk. One of the Democratic outsiders, the junior senator from the state of Illinois, a certain Barack Obama, had not only written his own book some years before, he had also executed an affecting personal memoir with grace and style, narrating an enthralling story with honesty, elegance and wit, as well as an instinctive gift for storytelling.

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