More than just a conventional biography, this revealing book seeks to place the extraordinary rise of Barack Obama - the son of a Kenyan immigrant who became his country's first African-American President - within the larger context of a possible historic political realignment in the US and limits to US power in the world.Pedersen asks what the election of the first African American president will mean for American national identity in the 21st century. And he assesses whether Obama's grassroots campaign strategy will influence the way he will govern as president. Pedersen argues that a shift toward a lasting Democratic majority requires the articulation of a new New Deal ideological framework for domestic policy and a post-post 9/11 strategy to meet the challenges of an emerging non-polar world - a world in which the US is no longer the sole superpower.Will Obama prove to be the catalyst for this renewal?

Introduction; Section I: Out of Many, One; 1. Identities; 2. Grassroots; 3. Coalitions; Section II: One Out of Many; 4. The Pacific World; 5. African Wars; 6. The Post-American World; Conclusion

Carl Pedersen is Adjunct Professor of American Studies at the Center for the Study of the Americas, Copenhagen Business School. His most recent publications (in Danish) are The Wrong War: The US and the New World Order (2006) and The Other America: Freedom and Renewal in the US (2008). He has also contributed to The Cambridge Companion to the Harlem Renaissance (2007) and United States Foreign Policy and National Identity in the 21st Century (Routledge 2008).