By Chung Ah-young
Staff Reporter
When Barack Hussein Obama was elected as U.S. President, his triumph not only amazed the United States but also the rest of the world. Although it is too premature to judge his presidency, he is still a role model inspiring many people around the world.
``How Obama Made It?: A Layman's Guide'' written in English by Ahn Young-sop, a professor at Myongji University, deals with the life of Obama from his birth to the inauguration and his first 100 days in office.
Numerous books about how the first African-American became the commander in chief in the U.S. were rushed into publication earlier this year but only a few touch on the untold details of his success.
Considering this, the book was penned as a guide for the everyday reader, covering Obama's entire life with thoughtful observations, research and accounts in an easy and succinct manner.
The main topic is self-explanatory: How the first ever African-American President of the U.S. made it into the White House.
The writer has looked into the facts and records about Obama for the last two years and found out the three secrets.
First, he set the theme of his life. Second, he found out the method to carry out the theme. Third, Obama developed a magnanimous character that backed up the theme and method.
To recount the three secrets of his success, the professor gives a dramatic but factual account in a chronicle manner about Obama who took his first steps in life in a rather unstable family.
He was born in 1961 in Hawaii to a Kenyan father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr. and an American mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. But after the divorce of his parents when he was two years old, he suffered an identity problem as both an American and a Kenyan during his younger years.
His father remarried and returned to Kenya, where he already had two sons because his home country allowed polygamy. Obama met his father only once before he died in a car accident in 1982. However, his father's death marked a turning point in him seeking the means to a better life, as his father, a Harvard-educated member of the elite, lived a lonely life until his death, rejecting any compromise with injustice and fighting against them for his country.
His mother also remarried Indonesian student Lolo Soetoro, who was attending college in Hawaii and Obama lived in Indonesia with his mother from the ages of six to ten.
But he returned to Hawaii in 1971 because his mother thought he would have a much better educational environment in the U.S.
Throughout his young days, he went through all sorts of hardship. Some of his friends treated him as an outsider as if Obama were not a member of American society. Sometimes, he was given the cold shoulder by them, and strayed from the right path. Being shunned by his classmates during his high school years, he first became conscious of racism and what it meant to be a black in America. In his memoir, Obama described how he struggled to reconcile social perceptions and bias about his multiracial heritage.
Following high school in Hawaii, Obama moved to Los Angeles to attend Occidental College and then transferred to Columbia University and entered Harvard Law School in the quest of elevating his aspirations for community development for the sake of ordinary people and the weak.
Then, he finally settled in Chicago to begin his career that would be the theme of his life as a community organizer, civil rights lawyer, law school professor and statesman.
``He was a man of unyielding spirit, magnanimity and empathy. He has been able to demonstrate outstanding leadership thanks to such virtues partly inborn, partly educated by his mother, and partly cultivated by his own efforts,'' said Ahn.
Among others, the author appreciated his character for leadership as the most important asset enabling his successful career. ``Inspired by his mother's teaching, he also believed in the power of education. These spiritual assets were closely connected with his realization that he had to help others, especially the needy. He at the same times realized that change was needed to make them better off. His career path has been consistent with the goal of the helping the needy and the change to achieve that goal backed up by those spiritual virtues,'' the author said.
Ahn said that his mother had wished her son would realize the American Dream when she decided to send him to Hawaii from Indonesia so that he could get an American education. ``Obama made the best of his ill fortune and at long last realized the seemingly improbable dream, making himself a real role model his fellow Americans to follow,'' the book said.
Obama has imbued not only Americans but also people across the world with the confidence that they too could achieve the American Dream.
``We hope that President Obama will never forget that there were numerous eyes on him and that people are there first before government. We wish that he, a good, smart man, will always be able to remember that people are much more precious than power,'' the writer said in his postscript to the book.
The author worked in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1985 as a visiting scholar. Ahn was also an associate with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University 1983-85. Educated at Columbia University and the University of Maryland for undergraduate studies, Ahn received his Ph.D. in international political economics from MIT. Prior to this, he earned another Ph. D. in journalism from Seoul National University in Korea.