The Audacity of Hope
Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
Barack Obama
“We hang on to our values, even if they seem at times tarnished and worn; even if, as a nation and in our own lives, we have betrayed them more often than we care to remember”
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Barack Obama’s political vision for the future of America, written two years before he became president; the New York Times bestseller
Before he was president, he was senator. Written two years prior to the election that would change the face of the United States, The Audacity of Hope discusses the importance of empathy in politics, Obama’s hopes for a different America and how the ideals of its democracy can be renewed.
With intimacy and self-deprecating humour, he describes his experiences balancing his family life with his public vocation. A senator and a lawyer, a professor and a father, a Christian and a sceptic, Barack Obama has written a book of transforming power that will inspire people the world over.
“You can sense instinctively why Obama invites devotion”
Peter Preston
observer
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“At a time when America’s standing in the world has sunk to unprecedented depths … his book aims at a missile of decency at the White House”
Nicolas Shakespeare
telegraph
“Offers readers on this side of the Atlantic a window not just into the mind of one of America’s most exciting politicians, but into the political landscope of the post-Bush era”
David Lammy
guardian
“It conveys a rare frankness and humility. The Audacity of Hope is light years ahead of his rivals”
Mary Fitzgerald
new Statesman
“A model of how a political book for a mass market ought to be written”
guardian
Barack Obama
Barack Obama was born in Honolulu in 1961. In his early twenties he found his vocation working among poor communities on the south side of Chicago. Later he went to law school at Harvard University, where he became the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review. In 1995 he published his memoir Dreams From My Father, which became a bestseller soon after it was reissued in 2004. After returning to Chicago, he was elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1996.
Barack Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and later that year he was elected to the US Senate. His second book, The Audacity of Hope, was published in 2006 and became an immediate bestseller. In November 2008 Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States of America, following which he published the bestselling Change We Can Believe In. He was re-elected in 2012 and served a second term which concluded in 2016. His next book, A Promised Land, is released in November 2020. He is married to Michelle, with whom he has two daughters, Sasha and Malia.
Barack Obama’s speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention on ‘The Audacity of Hope’, which would become the title of his second book.
The full text of the sermon by Jeremiah Wright – ‘The Audacity to Hope’ – from which Obama took the title of his book.
Jeremiah Wright
The Atlantic
