Born and raised in the most multicultural state in the union, President Barack Obama bears the indelible stamp of his native Hawai‘i. Stu Glauberman and Jerry Burris’s book, The Dream Begins: How Hawai‘i Shaped Barack Obama (Watermark Publishing, 2009), is a coming-of-age story set in Hawai‘i’s storied “melting pot”—a revealing look at the island state that is surely a core part of what makes Obama tick.

Born and raised in the most multicultural state in the union, Barack Obama bears the indelible stamp of his native Hawai‘i. The Dream Begins: How Hawai‘i Shaped Barack Obama is a coming-of-age story set in Hawai‘i’s storied “melting pot”—a revealing look at what makes Obama tick.

Authored by veteran political writers Stu Glauberman and Jerry Burris, the 160-page book examines Obama’s early years in Hawai‘i. The self-described “skinny kid with the funny name” flourished in the Islands, where local values foster tolerance, compromise and mutual respect—and where diversity defines people rather than divides them. The social mores of the Aloha State and the experience of growing up in an island culture have had a deep and lasting influence on the candidate. Obama himself has noted, “What’s best in me, and what’s best in my message, is consistent with the tradition of Hawai‘i.”