By Rich Fisher
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kwgs/local-kwgs-967794.mp3
Tulsa, Oklahoma – On this edition of our program, just before Mother's Day, we're speaking with the award-winning New York Times reporter Janny Scott, whose acclaimed new work of nonfiction is "A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother." Much attention has been focused, of course, on President Obama's (largely absent) father in recent times, but what do we know about Stanley Ann Dunham, the smart, driven, sometimes unorthodox, and always independent woman --- originally from Kansas --- who raised him? In this new biography, we find, as USA Today has noted, a "straightforward, deeply reported account [that provides us with] a complicated portrait of an outspoken, independent-minded woman [who led] a life of unconventional choices." And further, as has been noted in the pages of Newsweek: "If you want to understand what shaped our president, don't look to his father's disappearance. It was his unconventional mother who made him. . . . [This is an] incisive biography."