Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters is a children's book by United States President Barack Obama, with illustrations by Loren Long. It is described by the publisher as "a moving tribute to thirteen groundbreaking Americans and the ideals that have shaped our nation." The stories of thirteen Americans are told in the book: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Neil Armstrong, Sitting Bull, Cesar Chavez, Billie Holiday, Maya Lin, Albert Einstein (who was born in Germany), Georgia O'Keefe, Jackie Robinson, Helen Keller, and Jane Addams."

The proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated to a scholarship fund for the children of fallen and disabled US service personnel. Obama finished writing the book in 2008, before he became President of the United States.

Of Thee I Sing is a musical with a score by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin and a book by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind. The musical lampoons American politics; the story concerns John P. Wintergreen, who runs for President of the United States on the "love" platform. However, when he falls in love with sensible Mary Turner instead of Diana Devereaux, the beautiful pageant winner selected for him, he finds himself in political hot water.

The original Broadway production, directed by Kaufman, opened in 1931 and ran for 441 performances, receiving critical and box office success. It has been revived several times in the U.S. and in London. Of Thee I Sing was the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, in 1932.

The Gershwins and George S. Kaufman had collaborated on a satirical musical in 1927 entitled Strike up the Band that played in Philadelphia. The show concerned a cheese manufacturer who sponsors a war against Switzerland because it will be named after him. A version of Strike Up the Band with the book altered by Morrie Ryskind played on Broadway in early 1930. Much of the satire was replaced in the new version by silliness, leading Ryskind to recall, "What I had to do, in a sense, was to rewrite War and Peace for the Three Stooges."

Barack Hussein Obama II (ⁱ/bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/; born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. In January 2005, Obama was sworn in as a U.S. Senator in the state of Illinois. He would hold this office until November 2008, when he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.

Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004.

Following an unsuccessful bid against the Democratic incumbent for a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for the United States Senate in 2004. Several events brought him to national attention during the campaign, including his victory in the March 2004 Illinois Democratic primary for the Senate election and his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He won election to the U.S. Senate in Illinois in November 2004. His presidential campaign began in February 2007, and after a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination. In the 2008 presidential election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Nine months later, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In April 2011, he announced that he would be running for re-election in 2012.

Loren Long is an American #1 New York Times best-selling illustrator and has won the SCBWI’s Golden Kite Award for his picture book illustration.

He graduated from University of Kentucky, with a BA in Graphic Design. He lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with his wife and two sons.

The Knickerbockers were an American pop/rock music group, best remembered for their 1965 Beatles sound alike hit single, "Lies."

The band was formed in 1962 in Bergenfield, New Jersey by brothers Beau Charles (guitar & vocals) and John Charles (bass & vocals) (birth names: Robert and John Carlos Cecchino respectively) with fluctuating personnel until 1964, when they met Buddy Randell (vocals & sax) (birth name: William Crandall). Buddy was previously of the Rockin' Saints and the Royal Teens, who had a hit with "Short Shorts" in 1958. They took their name from Knickerbocker Road, which ran through the town next to their hometown.

The classic line-up consisted of Randell, the Charles brothers and drummer Jimmy Walker (previously the drummer with the Massena, New York-based Atco Records act The Castle Kings). They were spotted by producer and singer-songwriter Jerry Fuller playing the University Twist Palace in Albany, New York, and he subsequently signed them to Los Angeles-based Challenge Records.