A Game of Character: Review and Giveaway

“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.”
~Michael Jordan

I am always eager to learn more about President Barack Obama. In the early days of my blog, I read and reviewed two of his books, Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope. When I found out that the President's brother-in-law, Michelle Obama's older brother, college basketball coach Craig Robinson had written a book, A Game of Character, I was immediately drawn to it. Additionally, this book, a memoir published in 2010, is a NY Times bestseller which is touted as inspirational, so I was definitely not going to miss reading this one. Since childhood, I've enjoyed reading books about successful people, and often find them fascinating and inspiring, stocked with ideas that I try to incorporate into my own life. A book by the First Lady's brother was required reading, as far as I was concerned.

"To the best of my knowledge, my parents never consciously set out to develop a game plan for educating their children as to the importance of character. Nor, for that matter, would Marian or Fraser claim to have had any special knowledge or inherent parenting gifts for creating what I believe was the greatest start in my life that my sister and I could ever have wanted. And yet, the more time passes, the more amazed I am by how much they really did seem to know what they were doing."
~A Game of Character, Craig Robinson

Craig Robinson is an articulate narrator who talks honestly about his life and how he became involved with basketball, first as a player and later as a coach, and how the game of basketball continued to shape and refine his character. Born in 1962, he grew up in the Southside of Chicago, and learned about the importance of education, hard work, and discipline from his loving parents, Marian and Fraser. He excelled academically and in sports--basketball in particular--and attended Princeton University in the 1980s. Using basketball as a backdrop in his book, he discusses valuable life lessons, in chapters such as Meet the Home Team, Learn the Game, Not Just Your Position, and Luck Is Just Another Word for Hard Work, and infuses the book with intelligence and wisdom (which seem to go hand in hand). It truly is a brilliant book.

Having read A Game of Character, I now know that I'd sincerely enjoy meeting the Robinson family and the Obama family. In a sense, I do feel as if I've "met" them, due to this book, which is written in a friendly and down-to-earth manner, and features some family photos. I relished hearing about the Robinson family's initial impressions of Barack Obama, who had begun dating Michelle; they approved of our future president, who played basketball "with guts", right from the start. It's wonderful and reassuring to know that there are such caring, incredible families and people around, because strong family and personal values are at the core of character, on and off of the basketball court. Even if you don't know the "x's and o's, the nuts and bolts", of basketball, there is so much to learn from this book, and so much to be inspired by, that it shouldn't make any difference at all. Coach Robinson uses his life's passion, basketball, to talk about the development of character, and he does so in a very thoughtful and organized manner, making this a thoroughly enjoyable memoir!

Exciting news! Penguin is generously offering a giveaway for a copy of A Game of Character (U.S./Canada only).

• To enter this giveaway, simply leave a comment.
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Enter by 5PM PDT on Monday, June 13. One winner will be chosen randomly and announced on Tuesday, June 14. Good luck!


Special thanks to Lisa from TLC for sending me this book. For more reviews of this book, please visit the other stops on TLC's A Game of Character book blog tour.

Hail To The Chief

With great inspiration and imagination, Robert A. Stovall, Ph.D wrote Hail to the Chief: A Tribute to President Obama
.   I was excited to receive a copy of this book signed by the author in the mail!   Published in 2009, the book has an unusual format; it presents an imaginary dialogue with Barack Obama during the primary and general election. "The Voice" asks "Mr. O" penetrating questions, which President Obama, our first African American president, answers with his usual intelligence and eloquence.
We also hear fictional comments from people of the past (historical figures) and present, such as John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Tubman, Jackie Robinson, Malcolm X, Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, George W. Bush, Oprah Winfrey, and many others.  Hail To The Chief is serious in tone but has touches of humor. For example, we hear the imaginary reactions of past presidents:

Ronald Reagan says to Barack Obama, "Well I guess it's alright - but, but I just don't know what to say to Nancy", and Richard Nixon says, "You 'tricked' them, didn't you? Tricky, tricky, tricky, tricky!!!!".

And from singers:

Singer Marvin Gaye says, "What's going on? Somebody please tell me what's going on?" and The Temptations say (or sing) "We have got sunshine on a cloudy day".

I think this would be an especially engaging book for students, which would lead to a lot of discussion, or anyone with an interest in great leaders.  It's enjoyable to read, but at the same time it says a lot about racism, civil rights, and the hopes and dreams of the present and future.

Dr. Stovall grew up in rural Mississippi and was a Los Angeles educator for thirty years.  He's the founder and president of the Stovall Educational Uplift Foundation, a non-profit organization.  Proceeds from this book will benefit the Stovall Foundation's Scholarship Fund.

Special thanks to Robert A. Stovall, Ph.D and Bostick Communications for sending me this book.

Barack Obama: Dreams and Hope

I love to read biographies about great people, and in an attempt to get to know our forty-fourth president better, I've just read Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama. This #1 New York Times bestseller was originally published in 1995, and republished in 2004 with a preface by Barack Obama. The memoir details his early quest for an identity as he grows up and learns about his absent father through relatives in the U.S. as well as Kenya. As a mixed race person, Barack Obama struggled to carve out an identity for himself, find his calling in life--and eventually achieved the ultimate American Dream, to become the President of our great country.

Candid and gripping, this autobiographical narrative tells Barack Hussein Obama's story up until his entry into Harvard Law School. He was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961, to Barack Obama, Sr. of Kenya, and Stanley Ann Dunham (called, "Ann") of Wichita, Kansas, both students at the time at the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His mother was white and his father was black, and at that time interracial marriages in the U. S. were rare. Obama's parents separated when he was two years old, and divorced in 1964. His father remained an enigma to young Barack Obama (often called, "Barry"), because he saw him only once more before his death, when Obama Sr. came to Hawaii for a month when his son was ten years old.
After her divorce, Ann Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, an East-West Center student from Indonesia, and the family moved to Jakarta. When Obama was ten, he returned to Hawaii and lived with his loving, white grandparents--his mother joined them later--for the educational opportunities available there at the prestigious Punahou Academy. Along with this opportunity, however, he first became conscious of racism as an African American.

Obama enrolled at Occidental College after high school at Punahou, but transferred to Columbia University and majored in political science. After college, he worked for a year in business, then moved to Chicago, working for a non-profit doing community organizing in the Altgeld Gardens housing project on the city's South Side. He also joined Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. Before attending Harvard Law School, Obama visited his African relatives in Kenya and this is the final setting of the book. In addition to telling the story of Obama's life and discoveries about his father, this book includes much self-reflection on his own encounters with race and race relations in the United States. Through his words, Barack Obama comes across as caring, down-to-earth, and intelligent (of course), with a unique and interesting background. I didn't know that he spent a few years of his childhood in Indonesia after his mother remarried, and there are many other equally interesting aspects of his life described in vivid detail.

Currently I'm reading his second book, which is as sincere and thoughtful as his first, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. In it Obama discusses his political convictions in chapters titled: Republicans and Democrats, Values, Our Constitution, Politics, Opportunity, Faith, Race, The World Beyond Our Borders, and Family. I must admit that I've been skipping around a bit, instead of reading the chapters in order; the chapter called "Family", where he talks about his wife, Michelle, and children, Malia and Sasha, is genuinely touching. The book's title was derived from a sermon delivered by Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright (this sermon is mentioned in Obama's first book). While a Senate candidate, Obama delivered this keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention, which catapulted him to national prominence. In 2006, The Audacity of Hope was published in book form, which elaborates on many of the same themes in his convention speech. This is one of my favorite passages from his speech:

"In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope? John Kerry calls on us to hope. John Edwards calls on us to hope. I'm not talking about blind optimism here -- the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don't talk about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. No, I'm talking about something more substantial. It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a mill worker's son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!"

Senator Obama's victory in the historical presidential election of 2008, forty-three years after the Voting Rights Act passed, which finally to gave African Americans voting rights, aptly illustrates the meaning of "The Audacity of Hope". And when you think about it, the most important things we may dare to have are dreams and hope.

Books and Obama

In college if not before, President-elect Barack Obama discovered that words have the incredible power to transform lives. Equally eloquent as a speaker and as an author, Obama, who reads Baldwin, Lessing, Lincoln, Melville, Morrison, Shakespeare, and numerous others, has been shaped by his reading, much like the sixteenth President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. In Obama's first book, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, he acknowledges the importance of books in his life as a source of insight, information, and inspiration. On the eve of the inauguration, here's the original article from the NY Times.


Books by Barack Obama:

1. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995, 2004)
2. The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (2006)
3. Celebrating Change: Key Speeches of President-Elect Barack Obama, October 2002-November 2008 (2008) (also by Hillary Clinton and John McCain)
4. Change: Barack Obama's Plan to Repair the U.S. Economy (2008)