The president of the United States calls for a new politics—one rooted in the faith, inclusiveness, and nobility of spirit.

In July 2004, President Barack Obama, at the time an almost unknown candidate for the U.S. Senate, electrified the Democratic National Convention with an address that spoke to Americans across the political spectrum. One phrase in particular anchored itself in the minds of listeners, a reminder that for all the discord and struggle to be found in our history as a nation, we have always been guided by a dogged optimism in the future—what Obama called “the audacity of hope.”

In this best-selling book that takes off from that now legendary speech, Obama elaborates on a different brand of politics for those who are weary of bitter partisanship and alienated by the “endless clash of armies” we see in Congress and on the campaign trail; a politics rooted in the faith, inclusiveness, and nobility of spirit at the heart of “our improbable experiment in democracy.” Obama explores those forces—from the fear of losing, to the perpetual need to raise money, to the power of the media—that can stifle even the best-intentioned politician. He also writes, with surprising intimacy and self-deprecating humor, about settling in as a U.S. senator, seeking to balance the demands of public service and family life, and his own deepening religious commitment.

A senator and a lawyer, a professor and a father, a Christian and a skeptic, and above all a student of history and human nature, Senator Obama has written a book of transforming power. Only by returning to the principles that gave birth to our Constitution, he says, can Americans repair a political process that is broken, and restore to working order a government that has fallen dangerously out of touch with millions of ordinary Americans. Those Americans are out there, he writes—“waiting for
Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them.”

Praise for The Audacity of Hope

“An upbeat view of the country’s potential and a political biography that concentrates on the senator’s core values.” 
—Chicago Tribune

[The major bestseller by] “that rare politician who can actually write—and write movingly and genuinely about himself.”
—Michiko Kakutani, New York Times