Barack Obama the epoch-changer

By his mid-forties, President-elect Obama had authored two memoirs of his scattered life, both of which became global best-sellers. His search for identity has been instrumental in his upward journey towards power.
Yet for all his "age of Oprah" candour, and for all the 400-plus pages of his beguiling autobiography, Dreams from My Father, to many he remains a frustratingly elusive and enigmatic figure.

Who precisely is Barack Hussein Obama, a politician who defies neat encapsulation?

The back-story begins in a suitably exotic location: Hawaii. Back in the late-1950s, America's most newly-minted state was the meeting place for his African father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr, and his American mother, Ann Dunham.

A talented and exuberant economist who had won a scholarship to the University of Hawaii, Barack Sr came from the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya. His mother, Ann, was an "awkward, shy American girl", from Wichita, Kansas. Though Barack Sr was five years her elder, they met in a Russian language class and quickly fell in love.