The theory that Barack Obama’s first book, Dreams From My Father, was written in whole or in part by unrepentant terrorist and author Bill Ayers has been floating around out there for a while now.

I’d always found it at least compelling as a theory.  During his Harvard Law Review days, Obama was paid a hefty $125,000 advance to write an autobiography but, despite devoting countless hours in Chicago and even a during a writing trip to Bali, he failed.  It’s not hard to see why.  Here’s a sample of the poetry of college-era Barack Obama.

Under water grottos, caverns

Filled with apes

That eat figs.

Stepping on the figs

That the apes

Eat, they crunch.

The apes howl, bare

Their fangs, dance . .

Obama wrote absolutely nothing of note through 1990, but 5 years later (upon meeting Ayers) published a book that Time Magazine called “the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician.”

Researchers have run Obama’s two books as well as Ayers’ Fugitive Days from that era through authorship detection software.  The results are that Dreams From My Father and Audacity of Hope were written by different authors, and a high probability that Ayers wrote, at least in part, Dreams From My Father based on comparisons with his book.

[FictionFixer sofware author Chris] Yavelow contacted me and I sent him some relevant materials. When he ran the two books nominally by Barack Obama, the 1995 Dreams From My Father and the 2006 Audacity of Hope, through FictionFixer, he concluded, “They were written by different people.”

As Yavelow explains, authors don’t go from a 3.8 percent use of the passive voice in 1995 to an 8.3 percent use in 2006. For developing writers, the use of the passive almost always diminishes with experience.

Yavelow cites a score of other characteristics that change too conspicuously from one Obama book to the next, among them the Flesch Reading Ease score, the use of gender words, sentence starters, adverbs, discouraged words, sensory triggers, and more.

When, however, Yavelow compared Obama’s Dreams with Bill Ayers’ memoir, Fugitive Days, he found the similarity of the two books “striking.” He then quickly corrects himself: “‘Striking’ is an understatement for the relationship FictionFixer uncovered between Fugitive Days and Dreams From My Father.”

For instance, Dreams averages 17.61 words and 26.48 syllables for non-dialogue sentences. Fugitive Days averages 17.62 words and 26.27 syllables.

Another example is what Yavelow calls “attributions”-e.g., he “asked,” she “said,” they “wondered.” Some authors use as few as three. Many use fewer than twenty. Dreams, however, uses 36; Fugitive Days 34, and with only four exceptions-three of these used only once-the two books use the very same attributions.

Yavelow compares the two books on any number of other characteristics and concludes, “There is a strong likelihood that the author of Fugitive Days ghost-wrote Dreams From My Father using recordings of dialog (either tape recorded or notes). Alternatively, another scenario could be possible: Ayers might have served as a ‘book doctor’.”

The article goes into great detail with passage and theme comparisons.

With this new evidence, Ayers’ authorship of Dreams From My Father has moved beyond the level of an interesting theory.

Like That? You'll Probably Like These.

• Wake Up With Ayers On ABC’s Good Morning America
• Obama Claims Ignorance On Ayers’ Past
• Ayers Comes Clean: ‘Family Friends’ With Obama
• Ayers Victim Joins Team McCain, Releases Statement
• Manifesto: Ayers Was Revolutionary Communist, Not War Protester

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