Memoir of a 21st-Century History Maker

Why Barack Obama's book, published a decade ago but a best-seller only last fall, may be destined to become an American classic. By Mary Mitchell

Editors' Note: Barack Obama will take his U.S. Senate seat in the 109th Congress this month. Obama, 43, will be the only African American senator sitting in this 21st-century federal lawmaking body. Furthermore, he's only the fifth African American ever to serve as a U.S. senator.

Obama's memoir, Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, was published in 1995. As a result of publicity in 1990 when he became the first African American to serve as president of the Harvard Law Review, he was asked to write a memoir by …