Includes the senator's speech from the 2004 Democratic National Convention! In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father-- a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man-- has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey-- first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother's family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father's life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance.

“Provocative . . . Persuasively describes the phenomenon of belonging to two different worlds, and thus belonging to neither.”

New York Times Book Review

“Obama’s writing is incisive yet forgiving. This is a book worth savoring.”

Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Barack Obama is the junior U.S. senator from Illinois. He lives in Chicago with his wife, Michelle, and two daughters.