A LITTLE OVER a year ago, I read and reviewed Barack Obama’s memoir, Dreams From My Father. It was an odd Obama who leapt from those pages. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that Obama slouched from the pages of his own book.

In his autobiography, Obama came across as an extremely passive figure. By Obama’s own telling, things just happened to him. Obama’s study of his own life didn’t bother tracing how he transformed himself from a self-described Hawaiian “pothead” to Harvard Law School student to managing editor of Harvard’s Law Review. Obama didn’t see fit to give himself any action scenes in his own book.