MixedThe New York TImesWhether Mr. Obama has at last made peace with himself remains unclear, but he has at least stepped out of the paternal shadow ... At a young age and without much experience as a writer, Barack Obama has bravely tackled the complexities of his remarkable upbringing. But what would he have us learn? That people of mixed backgrounds must choose only one culture in which to make a spiritual home? That it is not possible to be both black and white, Old World and New? If this is indeed true, as Mr. Obama tells it, then the idea of America taking pride in itself as a nation derived of many different races seems strangely mocked. America will always be part of the Old World and part of the New, part dream and part reality -- that truth is integral to the greatness and the possibility from which Mr. Obama has so richly profited.
