Obama's Radical Roots: Saul Alinsky, Jeremiah Wright, and the Others who Shaped his Worldview

William Washington Bragg provides a comprehensive intellectual biography of the forty-fourth president, focusing on the unconventional lives and radical ideas of the people who most influenced him. Based on verified sources and adhering to strict academic standards, the book presents a balanced and non-partisan look at the president’s philosophical development. It examines: his grandfather, Onyango Obama, who was imprisoned by the British and bred a lasting hatred of colonialism; his father, Barack Obama, Sr., a socialist economist who was thwarted in his ambition to reshape his native country of Kenya; his mother, Ann Dunham, an anthropologist and activist who worked with women and the poor in Indonesia; Saul Alinsky, whose philosophy of “community organizing” Obama adopted during his years in Chicago and carried forward into his presidential campaign; and Obama’s former preacher, Jeremiah Wright, who brought the Black Liberation Theology of James Cone and Dwight Hopkins to the pulpit of Trinity United Church. Scrupulous and uncompromising, the book will be of interest to people across the political spectrum seeking to better understand the president and his policies.

William Washington Bragg is a writer and independent businessman based in Fort Worth, Texas.