Books like the audacity of hope

The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dreamis the second book written by then-Senator Barack Obama. It became number one on both theNew York Timesand Amazon.com bestsellers lists in the fall of 2006, after Obama had been endorsed by Oprah Winfrey. In the book, Obama expounds on many of the subjects that became part of his 2008 campaign for the presidency. The book advance from the publisher totalled $1.9 million contracted for three books. Obama announced his ultimately successful presidential campaign on February 10, 2007, a little more than three months after the book's release.

The title ofThe Audacity of Hopewas derived from a sermon delivered by Barack Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Wright had attended a lecture by Frederick G. Sampson in Richmond, Virginia, in the late 1980s, on the G. F. Watts paintingHope, which inspired him to give a sermon in 1990 based on the subject of the painting – "with her clothes in rags, her body scarred and bruised and bleeding, her harp all but destroyed and with only one string left, she had the audacity to make music and praise God ... To take the one string you have left and to have the audacity to hope ... that's the real word God will have us hear from this passage and from Watt's painting." Having attended Wright's sermon, Obama later adapted Wright's phrase "audacitytohope" to "audacityofhope" which became the title for his 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote address, and the title of his second book.