Barack Obama was born in Honolulu in 1961. In his early twenties he found his vocation working among poor communities on the south side of Chicago. Later he went to law school at Harvard University, where he became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. In 1995 he published his memoir Dreams from My Father, which became a bestseller soon after it was reissued in 2004.After returning to Chicago, he was elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1996. Barack Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and later that year he was elected to the US Senate. In 2008 he became President of the United States of America.