Author Description

University Press returns with another short and captivating biography of one of history’s most compelling figures, Barack Obama. Barack Obama is considered one of the most significant figures of the 21st century. He was the first African-American President of the United States, his signature “Obamacare” Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act extended health insurance coverage to 20 million Americans, he is credited with pulling the American economy back from the brink of an economic depression, he expanded federal hate crime laws to include crimes motivated by a victim’s gender or sexual orientation, he ended the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in the U.S. armed forces, his administration urged the Supreme Court to strike down same-sex marriage bans (which it did), he nominated two women (and America’s first Hispanic) to the Supreme Court, he substantially escalated the use of drone strikes against terrorists associated with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, he committed the United States to the Paris Agreement on global climate change, he brokered the JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran, he normalized U.S. relations with Cuba, and he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961. His mother was a white American from Kansas. His father was a black East African from Kenya. He grew up in Seattle, Honolulu, and Jakarta, attended college in Los Angeles, graduated from Columbia University in New York, graduated from Harvard Law School in Cambridge, met and married his wife, Michelle, in Chicago, and, for eight years, lived in the White House in Washington D.C. This short book tells the intensely human story of a man who changed the world in a way that no one else could.