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If you like both detective stories and politics, you will realize the political importance of Jack Cashill's newest book, Deconstructing Obama: The Life, Loves, and Letters of Americas First Postmodern President. Cashill manifests an attention to detail in the style of Sherlock Holmes, drawing on both the unknowns of Barack Obama's life and the intricacies of modern politics. Dreams From My Father was an essential engine driving Obama on his path to the presidency. The mainstream media and the literary establishment anointed the book as a political masterpiece. Time magazine called it the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician. Dreams played the same role for Obama that John F. Kennedy's Pulitzer-Prize-winning book, Profiles in Courage, played in carrying JFK to the White House. We now know that Profiles was ghostwritten by Ted Sorensen. Obama had spent two years at Columbia and three years at the Harvard Law School, and there seems to be no record of anything he ever wrote. Nothing in his career shows that he was capable of writing Dreams From My Father. Cashill's journey to unravel the mystery of the authorship of Dreams is built on original research and documentation. Cashill presents compelling evidence that Dreams was written by Obama's friend, Bill Ayers, who was a gifted writer. Cashill convincingly compares the writing style and vocabulary of Dreams with Bill Ayers's own memoir, Fugitive Days. Ayers had been a bomb-throwing radical in the 1960s, but in recent years has been a college professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Cashill is particularly qualified to assemble this documentation. He has an extensive background in editing and publishing, and he has reviewed the portfolios of at least a thousand professional writers. Cashill's book is an extensively researched work of literary criticism and social commentary. It will be enjoyed by anyone who wants to understand the man who became President. (Threshold Editions of Simon & Schuster, 2011, 343 pages, $25.) |
You can follow his discoveries as he locates and connects the dots proving that Obama could not possibly have written the book, Dreams From My Father, that launched him on his extraordinary career to the White House.
