By Wesley Johnson, PA, in New York
A politician with a rock star's status, Barack Obama has become the first African American president of the United States.
Tough enough to beat the Clinton political machine in a prolonged and often bitter primary season, he has avoided losing his temper on the campaign trail, perhaps keen to avoid the image of an angry black man.
The 47-year-old former Illinois senator's message of hope and change for America comes at a time when many of its citizens are unhappy with an unpopular war in Iraq, disillusioned with the nation's position in the world, and suffering at home from a global financial crisis caused by greed on Wall Street.
His high rhetoric and record-breaking rallies, including an audience of 200,000 people in Berlin, have seen him compared with a Messiah-like figure.
And he took his national convention to an outdoor stadium, standing in front of a stage resembling a Greek temple, or a federal building in Washington, as he accepted his party's nomination on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech.
"America, we are better than these last eight years, we are a better country than this," he said, as he compared his Republican rival John McCain with the unpopular President George Bush.
"This moment - this election - is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive."
His former rival Hillary Clinton (and now US Secretary of State) said he was her candidate in what was arguably the most important speech of her life and her husband, former President Bill Clinton declared Mr Obama was "the man" to lead America, despite clashing with him during the primary elections.
On his way to becoming the first African American nominee of any major political party, Mr Obama confronted the key issue of race in US society in a bold speech in March.
He said America could not afford to ignore the race issue and added that incendiary comments by his former pastor the Rev Jeremiah Wright reflected the "complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through - a part of our union that we have yet to perfect".
It was an attempt to diffuse the potentially damaging row over Mr Wright, whose inflammatory comments included describing the September 11 terror attacks as America's "chickens coming home to roost", and was widely seen as a success.
With only two years' experience in national office, Mr Obama announced his White House bid from the steps of the Old State Capitol building in Springfield, Illinois, in February last year, symbolically linking his campaign to former president Abraham Lincoln's 1858 House Divided speech.
He energised the youth vote during the primary season, huge crowds have greeted him at rallies at home and abroad, his two books have both become best-sellers, and many believe an Obama White House in 2009 might help heal the nation's scarred racial past.
The unprecedented level of support has led some critical observers to describe it as a cult-like backing, but Mr Obama - who lacked the name recognition of Mrs Clinton - has found the more time he spends in a state, the more votes he wins.
But several conservative talk show hosts frequently refer to his middle name, Hussein, and the senator, a Christian, has faced repeated suggestions that he is Muslim. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in August 1961, Barack Hussein Obama Jr was named after his Kenyan father, whose first name means "blessed" in Swahili.
His father grew up in Kenya herding goats but gained a scholarship to study in Hawaii where he met Mr Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, of Kansas. While still a toddler, his father went to study at Harvard but there was no money for the family to go with him and he later returned to Kenya alone before the couple divorced.
Mr Obama's mother married Indonesian Lolo Soetoro and the young child spent four of his pre-teen years in that country's capital, Jakarta.
He then moved back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents and attend school, before studying political science at Columbia University in New York.
He moved to Chicago where he spent three years as a community organiser, before attending Harvard Law School in 1988, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review.
Mr Obama later returned to Chicago to practise civil rights law, representing victims of housing and employment discrimination.
He married lawyer Michelle in 1992 and they have two young daughters, Malia Ann, 10, and Sasha, seven.
He was a state senator in Illinois from 1997 to 2004, but first attracted international attention when he made a keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, calling for more financial support for families of US troops killed in action.
"When we send our young men and women into harm's way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they're going, to care for their families while they're gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return, and to never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world," he said.
He became the only current African American US senator the following year - and only its fifth in history - and was the first African American to become a major US party's presidential nominee this year.
On foreign affairs, he has vowed to pull troops out of Iraq, "engage in aggressive personal diplomacy" with Iran, talk to Cuba's new leader Raul Castro, and would allocate the amount of aid to allied countries based on their commitment to fighting terror.
He hopes to create a subsidised public health care plan - which he says would provide health care for anyone who wanted it - and has put the reduction of greenhouse gases as one of his most important domestic goals.
Labelling his own campaign for change in all aspects of life - from foreign policy to healthcare, education and the legislative process - as an "improbable quest", Mr Obama still insists "few obstacles can withstand the power of millions of voices calling for change".
Defining his campaign, Mr Obama said: "I believe that Americans want to come together again behind a common purpose. Americans want to reclaim our American dream.
"That's why I'm running for president of the United States."
