The Barack Obama Miscellany - Hundreds of Fascinating Facts About America's Great New President - Mark Hanks

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       Contents

      Title Page

      1 Obama Trivia

      2 Early Obama

      3 Political Obama

      4 The Election Campaign

      5 Obama’s First Lady

      6 Friends of Obama

      7 Obama – Round the World

      8 Obama’s Family

      9 Sporty Obama

      10 Obama and the Big Issues

      11 Obama Humour

      12 Obama Family Ties

      13 All the President’s Men

      14 Obama Speaks

      Copyright

      ‘Don’t tell me we can’t change.

      ‘Yes, we can. Yes, we can change. Yes, we can.

      ‘Yes, we can heal this nation. Yes, we can seize our future. And as we leave this great state with a new wind at our backs and we take this journey across this great country, a country we love, with the message we carry from the plains of Iowa to the hills of New Hampshire, from the Nevada desert to the South Carolina coast, the same message we had when we were up and when we were down, that, out of many, we are one; that, while we breathe, we will hope.

      ‘And where we are met with cynicism and doubt and fear and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of the American people in three simple words – yes, we can.’

      Barack Obama, January 2008

       1

       Obama Trivia

      alt Favourite restaurant: Topolobampo in the River North section of Chicago, Illinois, serving Mexican and regional cuisine in a classy setting.

      alt Favourite TV shows: MASH and The Wire.

      alt Favourite drink: black forest berry iced tea.

      alt Favourite suits: Hart Schaffner Marx costing $1,500 each.

      alt Obama wears a Secret Service watch (made in China).

      alt He gets a haircut every nine days at Zariff in Chicago at $21 per cut.

      alt He has four identical pairs of black shoes, size 11.

      alt Favourite children’s book: Where the Wild Things Are.

      alt Casablanca and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest are two of his favourite films.

      alt Obama loves to cook, and does a ‘mean chilli’.

      alt The President collects comic books: Spider-Man is his favourite.

      alt As a teenager, he worked at Baskin-Robbins and these days he can’t stand ice cream.

      alt He doesn’t drink coffee or alcohol.

      alt Favourite musicians include: Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Bach and the Fugees.

      alt Barack is said to be a superb Scrabble player.

      alt He is left-handed.

      alt On his desk he keeps a carving of a wooden hand holding an egg, which in Kenya is a symbol of life’s fragility.

      Favourite Books and Writers

      Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Jefferson, Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, James Baldwin, W.E.B. DuBois’s Souls of Black Folk, Martin Luther King’s Letter From Birmingham Jail, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory and The Quiet American, Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward, John Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle, Robert Caro’s Power Broker, Studs Terkel’s Working, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments, and also Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men. Friedrich Nietzsche, Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich.

      alt Barack’s secret service codename is ‘Renegade’.

      alt Obama carries a bracelet belonging to Sgt. Ryan David Jopek of Wisconsin, a soldier who was killed in Iraq.

      alt His favourite dish is Michelle’s shrimp linguini.

      alt While at Harvard, Barack was rejected by an all-female committee after trying out for a pin-up calendar.

      alt He spent his first night in New York sleeping in an alley.

      alt Barack is 6’ 1?” (1.87m) tall.

      alt His star sign is Leo.

      alt He read the entire Harry Potter series to his daughter Malia.

      alt He can bench-press 200 pounds.

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