At the heart of The Audacity of Hope is Senator Obama’s vision of how his country can move beyond its divisions to tackle concrete problems. He examines the growing economic insecurity of American families and the racial and religious tensions within the body politic, and considers the nature of threats from outside America’s borders.

Offering personal reflections on values and ideals that have led him to public life, some thoughts on the ways that the current political discourse unnecessarily divides people, Barack Obama offers his own best assessment - based on his experience as a senator, and lawyer, husband and father, Christian and sceptic - of ways that politics can be ground into the notion of common good.

By returning to the principles that gave birth to the US Constitution, he says, Americans have a chance to repair a political process that is broken, and restore to working order a government that has fallen dangerously out of touch with millions of ordinary Americans.