...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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...Irvine Welsh Trainspotting IRVINE WELSH works, rests and raves in Edinburgh. He has had a variety of occupations too numerous and too tedious to recount. Trainspotting was his first novel and he has also published a collection of short stories, a novella entitled The Acid House and a second novel, Marabou Stork Nightmares. IRVINE WELSH TRAINSPOTTING Minerva Thanks to the following: Lesley Bryce, David Crystal, Margaret Fulton–Cook, janice Galloway, Dave Harrold, Duncan McLean, Kenny McMillan, Sandy Macnair, David Millar, Robin Robertson, Julie Smith, Angela Sullivan, Dave Todd, Hamish Whyte, Kevin Williamson. Versions of the following stories have appeared in other publications: 'The First Day Of The Edinburgh Festival' in Scream If You Want To Go Faster: New Writing Scotland 9 (ASLS), 'Traditional Sunday Breakfast'in DOG (Dec, 1991), 'It Goes Without Saying' in West Coast Magazine No. 11, 'Trainspotting at Leith Central Station' in A Parcel of Rogues (Clocktower Press), 'Grieving and Mourning In Port Sunshine' in Rebel Inc No. 1 and 'Her Man, The Elusive Mr Hunt' and 'Winter In West Granton' in Past Tense (Clocktower Press). The second part of 'Memories of Matty' also appeared in the aforementioned Clocktower Press publication as 'After The Burning'. Contents KICKING – – * THE SKAG BOYS, JEAN–CLAUDE VAN DAMME AND MOTHER SUPERIOR; JUNK DILEMMAS NO. 63; THE FIRST DAY OF THE EDINBURGH FESTIVAL; IN OVERDRIVE; GROWING UP IN PUBLIC; VICTORY ON NEW YEAR'S DAY; IT GOES WITHOUT...
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