Summary

Barack Obama begins his memoir with a preface in which he describes beginning to write these pages shortly after the end of his second term as president of the United States. Among his reasons for writing the memoir Obama states his wish to encourage young people to follow public careers, to describe what it is like to be president, and to affirm his own views of America’s ideals. He calls for a renewal of hope amid the coronavirus pandemic and civil unrest of 2020.

In the first chapter of his memoir, Obama describes his inauspicious upbringing in Hawaii. He describes his experience growing up with his mother, Ann Dunham, who instills in Obama an appreciation for intellectual freedom and justice. At a rummage sale, the young Obama discovers a box of old books. He reads them and discovers a love of literature in...