#1NEW YORK TIMESBESTSELLER ONE OFESSENCES 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS

In this iconic memoir of his early days, Barack Obamaguides us straight to the intersection of the most serious questions of identity, class, and race (The Washington Post Book World).

Quite extraordinary.Toni Morrison

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 fathera figure he knows more as a myth than as a manhas been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odysseyfirst to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mothers family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his fathers life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance.