Obama signs the dedication page from his book The Audacity of Hope

Barack Hussein Obama II, 1961–.  44th President of the United States.  5” x 7” book page, signed Barack Obama. 

This is the dedication page from President Obama’s second book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.  Obama has signed it beneath the dedication.

Obama dedicated the book to “the women who raised me,” his maternal grandmother, “Tutu,” who he said had been “a rock of stability throughout my life,” and his mother, Ann Dunham, “whose loving spirit,” he said, “sustains me still.”

The Audacity of Hope was published in 2006.  In his first book, Dreams from My Father, Obama had focused on his absent father.  That book was published in 1995, the year his mother died.  In the preface to the 2004 edition of Dreams from My Father, however, Obama said that he might have written a different book had he known that his mother would not survive ovarian cancer—“less a meditation on the absent parent, more a celebration of the one who was the single constant in my life.”  The Audacity of Hope appeared two years later, and Obama may have viewed this dedication as recompense for earlier the emphasis on his father.  Yet in this dedication, he names his grandmother first, by name, and mentions his mother second, without using her name.

Obama’s mother was born Stanley Ann Dunham but used various names throughout her life, through two marriages, eschewing her first name “Stanley” for evident reasons:  “Ann Dunham,” “Ann Obama,” “Ann Soetoro,” “Ann Sutoro,” “Ann Dunham,” “S. Ann Dunham,” and, in official correspondence, “(Stanley) Ann Dunham.”  She was an anthropologist who specialized in the economic anthropology and rural development of Indonesia.

This page is in very fine condition.  It has been cleanly trimmed to  5” x 7”, or we would grade it extra fine.  Obama has signed with a large 3¾” black felt-tip signature.

This piece comes with a color photograph of President Obama in the Oval Office, ready for framing.

Unframed.