This comprehensive, authoritative biography is set to be the record of Barack Obama’s rise to the presidency, from childhood to his time as a community organiser in Chicago, his early days as a Chicago senator, his long journey along the campaign trail, and the early days of his presidency.

David Remick is the editor of The New Yorker (and the author of the Pulitzer-winning Muhammed Ali biography King of the World). As you’d expect with these credentials, this is not just a biography with all the right facts and research – it’s also highly readable, packed with salient and interesting quotes from hundreds of interviews with Obama’s friends, mentors, family members and disparagers (and the man himself). It’s also notable for the quality of its analysis and its sure-footed consideration of the significance of Obama’s presidency within a historical context, as well as the role played by his carefully shaped narrative of race and identity – the promise of a new America, delivered by a new, multicultural president with no ties to the war in Iraq (and, in fact, a record of opposing the war from its distant beginnings).

Remnick tells how ‘a black man with a foreign-sounding name that rhymed with the first name of the most notorious terrorist in the world’ won over the majority of the American people – and how he used his unique and diverse personal history to his seemingly unlikely advantage. ‘He learned how to make it an emblematic story,’ Remnick writes, describing Obama’s approach as: ‘my story is your story, an American story.’

‘Obama proposed to be the first President who represented the variousness of American life.’ And at a time when American was under fire from the rest of the world for its misguided interference in Iraq, and at home for its careless bungling of Hurricane Katrina (bringing race issues firmly back to the forefront of the national psyche), this was a highly attractive prospect.

Already attracting rave reviews from everyone from the New York Times (and from chief book reviewer Michiko Kukatani, no less) to The Washington Post, this is set to become a classic – and is essential reading for anyone with an interest in contemporary American politics, or Obama himself. To be read alongside Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope for a thoroughly rounded picture of the man and his place in history, as it currently stands.