Diana Maher

Stanley Ann Dunham, President Obama's mother, has been known mostly by the over-simplified description "a white woman from Kansas", and as a victim of a medical insurance system that denied benefits when she was dying of cancer.  Now Janny Scott gives us a rich and complex view of this brilliant, unconventional woman, based on Dunham's correspondence and professional writings and on extensive interviews with extended family members, high school classmates, academic colleagues, co-workers, and, of course, her children Barack and Maya.