...Contents Title Page Dedication Prologue CHAPTER ONE: Republicans and Democrats CHAPTER TWO: Values CHAPTER THREE: Our Constitution CHAPTER FOUR: Politics CHAPTER FIVE: Opportunity CHAPTER SIX: Faith CHAPTER SEVEN: Race CHAPTER EIGHT: The World Beyond Our Borders CHAPTER NINE: Family Epilogue Acknowledgments About the Author Also by Barack Obama Copyright Prologue IT’S BEEN ALMOST ten years since I first ran for political office. I was thirty-five at the time, four years out of law school, recently married, and generally impatient with life. A seat in the Illinois legislature had opened up, and several friends suggested that I run, thinking that my work as a civil rights lawyer, and contacts from my days as a community organizer, would make me a viable candidate. After discussing it with my wife, I entered the race and proceeded to do what every first-time candidate does: I talked to anyone who would listen. I went to block club meetings and church socials, beauty shops and barbershops. If two guys were standing on a corner, I would cross the street to hand them campaign literature. And everywhere I went, I’d get some version of the same two questions. “Where’d you get that funny name?” And then: “You seem like a nice enough guy. Why do you want to go into something dirty and nasty like politics?” I was familiar with the question, a variant on the questions asked of me years earlier, when I’d first arrived in Chicago to work in low-income neighborhoods. It signaled a cynicism...
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...Monash University Australia "Once again Jared Diamond provides us with answers to questions we may never have stopped to ask, but wish we had. In this long essay Diamond explains that recreational sex, while not unique to humans, is a rare behavior in the animal world. Above all, we learn, sexual activity divorced fron procreation is not only part of what it is to be human, but the very crux of our evolutionary success." -Bettyaxn Kevles. author of Naked to the Bonn Medical Imaging in the Twentieth Centnty The Science Masters Series is a global publishing vonture consisting of original science books written by leading scientists and published by a worldwide team of twenty-six publishers assembled by John Brockman. The series was conceived by Anthony Cheetham of Orion Publishers and John Brockman of Brockman Inc., a New York literary agency, and developed in coordination with Basic Books. The Science Masters name and marks are owned by and licensed to the publisher by Brockman Inc. Copyright c 1997 by Jared Diamond. Published by Basic Books, A Member of the Perseus Books Group. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this...
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