Book Review of Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition

James Kloppenberg\u27s Reading Obama is a breathless account of Barack Obama\u27s intellectual heritage. While a great survey of American political history and thought, and laudable in its advocacy of a sophisticated civic republicanism informed by philosophical pragmatism as filtered though Rawls, it is difficult to identify its chosen audience. Further, many of the claims made in the book are less than fully supported in relationship to Obama\u27s current political actions