In The AUDACITY of HOPE,  Obama writes:
"And in that place [Lincoln Memorial], I think about America and those who built it.  This nation's founders, who somehow rose above petty ambitions and narrow calculations to imagine a nation unfurling across a continent.  And those like Lincoln and King, who ultimately laid down their lives in the service of perfecting an imperfect union.  And all the faceless, nameless men and women, slaves and soldiers and tailors and butchers, constructing lives for themselves and their children and grandchildren, brick by brick, rail by rail, calloused hand by calloused hand, to fill in the landscape of our collective dreams.
"It is that process I wish to be a part of.
"My heart is filled with love for this country."

Today, January 21, Barack Obama will place his hand not only on President Lincoln's bible but also on freedom-rights advocate Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s bible to be sworn in at his official inauguration ceremony.

~Barack Obama (b. August 4, 1961) author of two New York Times Bestsellers: Dreams from My Father, 1995 and The AUDACITY of HOPE, 2006, Random House.
Praise for The Audacity of Hope*

"Obama's knack for mixing stirring rhetoric about good and evil with practical policy ideas is rare in the modern history of U.S. politics...  In our lowdown, dispiriting era, Obama's talent for proposing humane, sensible solutions with uplifting, elegant prose does fill one with hope."  ~ Michael Kazin, Washington Post

"He is one of the best writers to enter modern politics." ~ Johnathan Alter, Newsweek.com

"[Barack Obama] is that rare politician who can actually write  and write movingly and genuinely about himself...[He] strives in these pages to ground his policy thinking in simple common sense...while articulating these ideas in level-headed, nonpartisan prose.  That, in itself, is something unusual, not only in these venomous pre-election days, but also in these increasingly polarized and polarizing times." ~ Michiko Kakutani, New York Times.

*Back dustcover.