Changing Times: The Life of Barack Obama

CHANGING TIMES: THE LIFE OF BARACK OBAMA examines his remarkable rise in the context of social, cultural, and political history. Changing Times is a comprehensive, cogently reasoned, and tightly written examination of a unique American life. The black experience forms one backdrop to the story told in Changing Times. Despite his complicated genealogy, Obama chose to seek out his African roots and has embraced the label of being black. Race and his ability to rise above the racial divide have been central to Obama’s career, but not the sole aspects. In addition to his racial identity, Obama is the first presidential candidate of the demographic identified as “Late Boomers,” a generation too young to have experienced Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement, and the upheavals of the 1960s as anything but images on television. His age gives Obama an opportunity to speak beyond the divisive struggles over identity and culture that absorbed so much energy from the “Early Boomers” who preceded him into politics. The tone of Changing Times is positive both on Obama and America’s potential to heal from the wounds of history. However, it will not avoid asking questions of the gap between ideals and reality in Obama and the nation he serves as president.

GLEN JEANSONNE Glen Jeansonne has taught 20TH-century American history at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, Williams College, the University of Michigan, and since 1978, at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He has won two Teaching Awards and a University Research Award. His twenty-two grants and fellowships include a fellowship from the John D and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Jeansonne has fourteen books in print or in press, among them A Time of Paradox: America Since 1890; Women of the Far Right; Messiah of the Masses: Huey P. Long and The Great Depression; Gerald L. K. Smith: Minister of Hate; and Transformation and Reaction: America, 1921-1945. Gerald L. K. Smith won the Wisconsin Writer’s Award for Best Academic Book, the Gustavus Meyers Award for research related to bigotry, and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He is now writing a study of Herbert Hoover. Jeansonne has published over sixty scholarly and popular articles and 150 reviews. He edits two book series and was Associate Editor of Louisiana’s state journal, Louisiana History. In 2001, he was elected a Lifetime Fellow of the Louisiana Historical Association. He has participated in television documentaries about Leander H. Perez, Huey P. Long, and Herbert Hoover. DAVID LUHRSSEN David Luhrssen has taught at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee, the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and Milwaukee Area Technical College. He has lectured at Marquette University, Beloit College, and Concordia University. Luhrssen is co-author with Glen Jeansonne of A Time of Paradox: America Since 1890, and Searching for Rock and Roll with Martin Jack Rosenblum, a contributor to Women and War and The International Discography of the New Wave. He has been published in Historically Speaking, History Today, the Journal of American History, the Wisconsin Academy Review, and other journals. Luhrssen received his undergraduate and graduate degrees in history at UW-Milwaukee. Luhrssen is also Arts & Entertainment Editor and Film Critic of Milwaukee’s weekly newspaper, the Shepherd Express. He has written about music, film, culture, and books for Billboard, Entertainment Weekly, the Milwaukee Journal, Op, New York Rocker, Trouser Press, and other publications. He is also a regular commentator on film for Milwaukee’s NPR affiliate.