The most powerful man in the world says he owes everything to his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, the mother of President Barack Obama. She was an extraordinary and charismatic woman, who lived a full life, moving halfway around the world, yet remaining a true American both participating in making a better world and observing it with intelligent eyes. Stanley Ann’s personal and public life mirrored (and often presaged) the important political, cultural and social changes of her time. From the Cold War fears, to the Civil Rights movement, Feminism and the United States’ presence abroad, Ann Dunham’s journey from a small town in Kansas to the remote villages of Indonesia, taught her what it truly means to be an American.