Within this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother looks for a workable meaning to his life being a black American. It starts in NY, where Barack Obama discovers that his father-a shape he knows even more as a myth than being a man-has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an psychological odyssey-first to a small town in Kansas, that he retraces the migration of his mother’s family members to Hawaii, and to Kenya, where he matches the African part of his family members, confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance.

Pictured in lefthand picture on cover: Habiba Akumu Hussein and Barack Obama, Sr. (President Obama’s paternal grandmother and his father as a young man). Pictured in righthand picture on cover: Stanley Dunham and Ann Dunham (President Obama’s maternal grandfather and his mom as a girl).