Today at my part time job at the bookstore, whenever I had the chance, I picked up Obamaa's Audacity of Hope.. I didn't get far into the book but I like what I have read so far.

Here is part of Page 9 of the Prologue:

"Religious or secular, black, white, or brown, we sense – correctly- that the nation's most significant challenges are being ignored, and that if we don't change course soon, we may be the first generation in a very long time that leaves behind a weaker and more fractured America than the one we inherited. Perhaps more than any other time in our recent history, we need a new kind of politics, one that can excavate and build upon those shared understandings that pull us together as Americans.

"That's the topic of this book: how we might begin the process of changing our politics and our civic life. This isn't to say that I know exactly how to do it. I don't. Although I discuss in each chapter a number of our most pressing policy challenges, and suggest in broad strokes the path I believe we should follow, my treatment of the issues is often partial and incomplete. I offer no unifying theory of American government, nor do these pages provide a manifest for action, complete with charts and graphs, timetables and ten-point plans.

"Instead, what I offer is something more modest: personal reflections on those values and ideals that have led me to public life, some thoughts on the ways that our current political discourse unnecessarily divides us, and my own best assessment – based on my experiences as a senator and lawyer, husband and father, Christian and skeptic – of the ways we can ground our politics in the notion of a common good."