A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother

(Paperback)

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Barack Obama has written extensively about his father in the bestselling Dreams from my Father (Canongate, 2008) but credited his mother for 'what is best in me'. Yet little is known about this fiercly indpendent, spirited woman who raised the man who would become the first biracial president of the United States. A Singular Woman is a dedicated and comprehensive account of a truly inspirational woman. Janny Scott provides an illuminating look at someone who was not afraid to break the rules of her time, showing how her fierce example helped influence the President.

Reviews

An ambitious new biography. . . . Scott pursues a more perplexing and elusive figure than the one Obama pieced together in his own books.The New York Times Book Review

Even Obama knew that he had not his extraordinary mother justice. Janny Scott . . . does. She portrays Dunham as a feminist, an utterly independent spirit, a cultural anthropologies, and an international development officer who surely helped shape the internationalist, post-Vietnam-era world view of her son. Scotts book is tirelessly researched, and the sections covering Dunhams life in Indonesia especially are new and valuable to the accumulating biography of Obamas extended global family.The New Yorker

Janny Scott packs two and a half years of research into her bio of Stanley Ann Dunham, the quixotic anthropologist who raised a president.People

The restrained, straight-ahead focusrather in the spirit, it turns out, of Dunham herselfpays off. By recovering Obamas mother from obscurity, A Singular Woman adds in a meaningful way to an understanding of a singular president.Slate

The key to understanding the disciplined and often impassive 44th president is his mother, as Janny Scott, a reporter for the New York Times, decisively demonstrates in her new biography A Singular Woman. . . . Scott [uses] meticulous reporting, archival research and extensive interviews with Dunhams colleagues, friends and family, including the president and his sister. What emerges is a portrait of a woman who is both disciplined and disorganized, blunt-spoken and empathetic, driven and devoted to her children, even as she ruefully admits her failings and frets over her distance from them.The Washington Post

Meticulously-researched and well-written . . . a necessary counterpart and corrective to Obamas first book Dreams from my Father.Financial Times

In her own right, Ann Dunham was a fascinating woman. . . . The story of the singular woman at the center of this book is told, and told well, by Scott.San Francisco Chronicle

What emerges in this straightforward, deeply reported account is a complicated portrait of an outspoken, independent-minded woman with a life of unconventional choices.USA Today

We get a much fuller story of Ms. Dunhams life in A Singular Woman, Janny Scotts richly researched, unsentimental book.The New York Times

If you want to understand what shaped our president, dont look to his fathers disappearance. It was his unconventional mother who made him. . . . [An] incisive biography.Newsweek

A richly nuanced, decidedly sympathetic portrait of President Obamas remarkably accomplished, spirited mother. . . . A biography of considerable depth and understanding.Kirkus

Scott gives us a vivid, affecting profile of an unsung feminist pioneer who made breaking down barriers a family tradition and whose legacy extends well beyond her presidential son.Publishers Weekly (starred)

Author Bio

Janny Scott was a reporter for The New York Times from 1994 to 2009, when she left to write this book. She was a member of the Times reporting team that won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.