Barack Obama wrote this book after he finished law school, so there is nothing of his later life in it. Which makes it quite slow at times, in fact, if Obama were not president, you would wonder why you were reading this book at all. However, it was quite interesting to learn the history of the president, the high points being the time he spent in Indonesia and the life of his wandering father. In addition, I was reading this book during the Freddie Gray protests in Baltimore and this book provided some of the feeling behind black America's anger. Ultimately, I would not recommend this book because you can really find all of the information on Wikipedia, which detracts from the suspenseful parts of the book because (spoiler alert) Obama goes to Harvard and doesn't get in enough trouble to prevent him from becoming president.