If We Live Inside A

'dreams From My Father' Reveals More About Obama Than Is Usually Known About Political Leaders Until After They're Dead. Perhaps More Than It Intends, It Shows His Mind Working, In Real Time, Sentence By Sentence, In What Feels Like A Private Audience With The Reader.

In Rural Areas The Majority Of The Victims Of Violent Crime Know Their Assailants (indeed, Are Probably Married To Them); In Cities, The Killer And The Mugger Come Out Of The Anonymous Dark, Their Faces Unrecognized, Their Motives Obscure.

It Always Seems To Me Odd To Call A Place A Wilderness When Every Wilderness Area In The Us Bristles With Rules And Regulations As To How You Can Behave, What You're Allowed To Do, And Is Patrolled By Armed Rangers Enforcing The Small Print. They're Parks, Of Course, Not Wildernesses At All.

In Novels And Autobiographies, The First Positive Move That The Immigrant Makes Towards Assimilation Is To Buy Himself A Suit Of City Clothes.

I've Taught The Better Class Of Tourist Both To See And Not To See; To Lift Their Eyes Above And Beyond The Inessentials, And Thrill To Our Western Nature In Her Majesty.