Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961in Honolulu, Hawaii. Obama was in kinship care as a young boy. He was born to an American mother of European descent and an African father. His mother, Ann Dunham (1942–1995), and father, Barack Obama Sr. (1936–1982), married in Wailuku, Hawaii, on February 2, 1961, six months before Obama was born.
Obama's parents divorced in March 1964. He visited his son in Hawaii only once, at Christmas 1971, before he was killed in an automobile accident in 1982, when Obama was 21 years old.
In 1971, Obama returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Dunham. Obama lived with his mother and half-sister, Maya Soetoro, in Hawaii for three years from 1972 to 1975 while his mother was a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Hawaii.Obama chose to stay in Hawaii with his grandparents for high school at Punahou when his mother and half-sister returned to Indonesia in 1975, so his mother could begin anthropology field work.
'The Audacity of Hope' is Barack Obama’s call for a different brand of politics—a politics for those 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.” He 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 senator, seeking to balance the demands of public service and family life, and his own deepening religious commitment.