For decades Americans have turned to LIFE magazine to see, understand, and remember the most important events and people of our time. Just as LIFE once opened up the glittering Kennedy White House, the magazine now focuses its lens on Barack Obama.

The American Journey of Barack Obama covers the candidate from his childhood and adolescence to his time as editor of The Harvard Law Review and his Chicago activist years, culminating with the excitement and fervor of the historic 2008 Democratic National Convention. The unfolding drama of Obama's life and political career is cinematic in scope, and never has it been presented so compellingly.

This book also includes a Foreword by the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy and an incisive narrative biography and original essays by some of our finest writers, including Gay Talese, Charles Johnson, Melissa Fay Greene, Andrei Codrescu, Fay Weldon, Richard Norton Smith, Bob Greene, and several others. Many listeners will find a new understanding of Obama. All will feel that they are bearing witness to a singular, undeniably American story.