Rising Star audiobook

This is the quintessential political biography of our time. I was completely enamored with this book from start to finish. Garrow spent over 9 years on his research, and it shows. His attention to detail is incredible. The book itself is highly informative but remains accessible throughout. For those complaining about the length, I don't know what to tell you. The rise of Barack Obama is an incredible story and deserves a comprehensive examination, which this book provides in spades. I could not recommend this book more strongly. It provides an intimate look at a man who has spent the last 8 years in the public eye but remains a mystery, even to those who have known him for 20+ years.Well done David Garrow, this is a book for the ages.

An exhaustive and often fascinating look at Obama before he was president from the same historian who won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing the character flaws of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Could've done without the first and last chapters, but otherwise the author does a great job at cutting through all the myths about Barack Obama.The myth of his name. He actually grew up Barry, a spoiled kid raised by upper middle-class white grandparents in Hawaii. He didn't call himself Barack until college when he realized that affirmative action could open doors for him. The myth of him being studious. He was actually a stoner in college. A lot of folks don't realize that he spent two years at a party school in Los Angeles. So much attention is placed on him doing coke but I was amazed that he sheepishly admitted to getting high and letting his dealer blow him.The myth of him being a constitutional law scholar. Two other folks actually beat him out to lead the Harvard Law Review. He only got the job because of affirmative action and ended up doing a crap job with it. He was never an academic. There's still a lot of bad blood at the University of Chicago because he used connections to get a really high salary while only teaching a handful of low-level classes. Nobody else got that sweetheart deal.The myth of him being a community organizer. He spent six months in the ghetto and ran away screaming from it. Notice that he rarely ever goes back to Chicago? The folks in his old neighborhood despise him. The myth of him being a black nationalist. Jesse Jackson and Jeremiah Wright may have been his mentors but he threw them under the bus the moment they became political liabilities. Starting out, his worst enemies were Black Panthers like Bobby Rush who called him a fraud.The myth of his memoir. His book "Dreams from my Father" was heavily fictionalized. His mother, sister, grandmother and childhood friends were really hurt that he pretended that they weren't important to his life and were baffled by just how much stuff he made up.The myth of his romance with Michelle. He promotes this fairy tale image that Michelle was the first woman he ever loved. In reality, he had two girlfriends that he lived with for YEARS. He just doesn't like to talk about them because they're white.The myth of him being honest. He was in bed with the shadiest Chicago politicians and mobsters. His biggest donor, disgraced businessman Tony Rezko, basically bought Obama a million-dollar mansion and bankrolled Obama's income for a number of years using kickbacks from government contracts and land deals.The myth of him being an effective legislator. He only got his state senate seat by conning an old woman into giving it to him then stabbing her in the back when she realized he lied to her. He did zilch in the state senate and even less in the US Senate.The myth of him being progressive. He ran as an anti-war, anti-Wall Street candidate....just to end up embracing the Iraq War, torture, the Patriot Act, Big Banks and Big Business.The myth of hope and change. It was all a lie. Just something he said to get elected.I know all of this sounds super harsh. I actually DO like Barack Obama as a person. I think he's a nice guy. Cares about his family. A million times better than Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. But I really do think history will judge him as an empty suit who didn't live up to the hype.

While others have criticized this biography for being too critical of President Obama or too pedantic, too detailed and too long, I give it five stars. And I am a huge Obama fan.You can admire Obama and also appreciate this book if you accept that Obama is human and like all of us have exaggerated things in your past, not always treated all friends well, and have made decisions that have been influenced by ambition and pragmatism. And that different people who knew Obama in the past had the same experiences and came away with different conclusions. I also appreciated the detail and length of the book. David Garrow interviewed scores of people in researching the biography, from family friends of Obama's grandparents to people who knew Obama in high school and his two colleges and every stage in his life. Garrow's research went past oral interviews, he cites Obama's tax records, the written reviews of the law school classes he taught, the books and personal letters he wrote, the speeches he made.While there are no huge new revelations in this book, aside from an old girlfriend's claim that Obama was intimate with her a few times after he started dating Michelle, the detail of the book gives nuance to his life. I will briefly discuss a fewAs a young man Obama did express disappointment, almost bitterness, about his mother while she was still living. Of course he was justified in that, she essentially abandoned him to her parents so she could pursue her studies and career and also exotic lifestyle in a country far away from him. This disappointment had to have been exacerbated by the few unsatisfactory contacts with his father. This book explains his father's complexities and demons better than anything else I have read.Obama was not a star in high school or college. No one then could have predicted greatness, he did not start on his basketball team, was not a top student, not a student leader. Obama blossomed laterHis law school years were fascinating. Garrow interviewed those who liked and those who did not. But he was unquestionably brilliant. He made law review without marking the affirmative action box on his application. He was acknowledged as one of the two smartest students in his class even by those who complained about his talking too much in class.The chapters on his Chicago years show that he was much closer to Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn than was admitted during his campaign; there was a time when the Obamas and them would have weekly dinners at their home with just them or a few other couples. His career owed more to the crooked financier Tony Rezko than many of his may thought, but his involvement with Jeremiah Wright's church seems to be less than claimed by many.There are frank sections about challenges to the Obama marriage. Infidelity was not one. Even in Springfield, Obama avoided any temptations, his commitment to Michelle was strong and he also explained to friends that nothing could be worth Michelle finding out. The challenges were economic, the book explains the financial struggles caused by Obama's political career instead of a career with real money as Michelle wanted and also the struggle of Michelle accepting a second fiddle status to Obama's political career.The political career is explored in depth. The description of his relationship with a mentor, Alice Palmer, is balanced, the reader can decide if Obama reneged on loyalty to her or if Palmer was selfish in wanting her state senate seat back. Obama's relationships and record in the state senate are carefully examined and the chapters on the 2004 US Senate campaign make the reader feel as if he or she were there at the timeMy one disappointment with this book is the epilogue. The book ends as Obama starts his Presidential campaign and the epilogue skims through the campaign and Obama's Presidency. It is when Garrow leaves the detailed narrative that lets the reader make the conclusions and turns to a skinny narrative where Garrow makes the shallow conclusions about the Presidency that the book sours. It would have been much better if Garrow had ended the book and considered writing a second volume on the Presidency.But all in all, this a great, informative biography

I give this maybe actually a 3.75 than a 4.0, but to clarify, I think I really learned a lot. There is a lot to unpack here and David Garrow does a lot of research attempting to do so. The notes run 271 pages and quite frankly I was not up to that task, but I am a huge note reader and have six sheets of my own notes to research further.I know Barack Obama is a polarizing figure, so I'm just going to state this one thing. To me, Jimmy Carter is the epitome of a President who wanted to make change, and perhaps did so more post-Presidency. You can argue the appropriateness and efficacy of that change, but I really do believe he made the world a better place. Barack Obama came into political life as someone who wanted to make change. The reviews of his ability to do so are both all over the place and too early to gauge. Yet, I would note his often spoken value of making change in Chicago. Chicago needs someone to make change. If Barack could create a "Habitat for Humanity" as it were that dealt with the problems in Chicago his legacy would grow.For someone seemingly obsessed with Bono, Jay Z, and Beyoncé I don't think that will happen, but I leave you with this. President Carter enjoyed a lot of concerts and baseball games all while making the world a better place. I'll be honest, after reading this book, I'm not holding my breath.

At over 1000 pages I haven't actually read every word but certainly enough to be impressed. Among other things Garrow exhaustively covers Chicago issues and politics displaying a thorough and balanced view. His description of Obama's character and career is similarly thorough and balanced but won't be seen that way by Obamamanaics because he reveals the weaknesses as well as the strengths of Obama's not totally likable personality. This is far from a gossipy, journalistic tell all. Garrow is an established historian who minutely documents his work. This has to stand as the definitive Obama biography for a long time to come if not forever. I hope Garrow publishes a sequel covering the presidential years.

Enlightening! This was an incredibly dense and involved read. At times it reminded me War and Peace because there are so many characters to keep straight. Nonetheless, the book reveals some interesting tidbits and helps explain the Obama presidency.

Absolutely masterful. I obviously disagreed with parts (if you're only going to cover the presidency in an epilogue, not sure it should be covered), but the first 2/3 of the book were fascinating. It provided an education in about 17 different subjects.

I got a strange thrill out of reading this perverse book. Garrow produced a nearly non-narrative biography, one whose endless accumulations of detail remind me of a Frederick Wiseman documentary because the readers are expected to do the bulk of the editing in their own heads and reach their own conclusions. Individual paragraphs often mash together fundraising, speeches, and family anecdotes, without any kind of a topic sentence to bind them. Many readers will grow tired of, for example, reading the syllabi for Obama's college courses at Occidental and Columbia, but the faithful will be rewarded. Some of Garrow's obsessions are obvious; everyone should understand why he details every newspaper announcement of Obama's birth in 1961. Others are more stubborn to yield their fruits, and the reader would be forgiven for wondering why it's so significant that Obama's mother liked the movie Black Orpheus, or why we need to know how many typos Obama's love letters had, or why we need an accurate count of Obama's traffic tickets. But Garrow delivers on these long odds again and again, doling out critical information in unobtrusive prose that lets readers dream that they made the connections entirely on their own. Garrow doesn't state a thesis, but a scathing (albeit slapdash) epilogue should leave little doubt: Rising Star is about how Obama misplaced his political conscience by tying it to, and subsuming it under, an astounding feat of self-creation. Few important political figures have the background of Obama: a mixed race child of largely absent parents, who attended a party school and went into community organizing. Garrow indicates Obama's most consequential decisions involved trying to transform or erase these unfamiliar details: In the process, he becomes an empty vessel. Like many other Presidents, Obama is willing to do just about anything to get elected, including throwing his grandmother under the bus. But unlike many Presidents, Obama's goals stop with self-achievement. He loses interest in issues he spent the entire rest of his career pursuing--educational reform, universal health care--because the act of becoming President severs the personal connections that caused him to take them up in the first place. Garrow compellingly contrasts Obama with figures like Chicago organizer Frank Lumpkin, a former steelworker who campaigns for a decade to recover steelworkers' pensions from large corporations. Lumpkin makes halting progress where others failed, and eventually achieves a modest victory, whereas Obama leaves organizing behind forever after three years that accomplish very little. Garrow teasingly begins his biography with 40+ pages on South Side Chicago in the 80s, before Obama arrived, signaling that the issues and people there are important to his story. Readers have to wait another 150 pages before Obama reaches Chicago. But Obama's engagement with those figures and their lives is brief, and peters out entirely about halfway through the book. Perhaps this is Garrow's point: to give readers an investment in South Side Chicago that Obama would ultimately fail to address, recreating the disillusionment of its citizens.A closer, but no less telling comparison was Harold Washington, Chicago's mayor during much of the 80s. Obama lauded Washington's achievement at becoming mayor, but found him ineffectual in office, and notes he failed to nourish a capable bureaucracy that could continue without him. This criticism is ironically prescient. Disgraced U.S. Representative Mel Reynolds appears briefly as a cautionary tale, a rising star politician and Rhodes Scholar who succumbs to a series of shocking scandals.Rising Star contains some unsightly flaws in addition to its daunting length. Garrow often crows about being the first to locate a source, but he's had significantly more time and more leeway than a Republican opposition researcher, and he's also been a beneficiary of more hindsight, more bitter ex-fans, than the first wave of Obama biographies. Speaking of those ex-fans, Garrow sometimes lets his prize interviewees steer his pen. Ex-girlfriend Sheila Jager and ex-Illinois strategy chief Dan Shomon both receive sympathetic, somewhat melodramatic treatments when Obama moves on. But it's not at all clear to me that Garrow has framed either of their situations objectively. The cynical view says that Obama left Jager because he believed it was politically expedient to marry someone Black, but there's plenty of evidence that the relationship had many other problems--not least that Jager and her parents had already rejected Obama when he asked about marriage earlier. Obama supposedly discards Shomon when he's outlived his usefulness, but that calculation actually seems somewhat sensible: Shomon knew Illinois politics very well, but Obama had to navigate national issues and national politics as a U.S. Senator. Garrow also manages to jam in three completely unnecessary references to his prize-winning book Bearing the Cross. Although I enjoyed the treasure-hunting quality of Rising Star, I often longed for the traditional panoramic scene setting common to biographies. Garrow indulges in this just once, for Chicago's South Side in the years before Obama arrived, but doesn't offer the same treatment to Springfield's political milieu, nor the U.S. Senate in 2004. He also makes no attempt to untangle minor scandals. Corrupt donors such as Tony Rezko appear often, but the biography sheds no light on whether Obama ever promised or delivered policy that benefited him. Similarly, political strategy exits the book after Obama clinches the Senate primary. Obama's Nobel Peace Prize--a really fitting subject for Garrow's hidden thesis --is not even mentioned.On these occasions, Garrow's dedication to making the book about Obama himself prevents us from taking a real measure of his multifaceted impact on the world. Obama transformed national campaigning and political fundraising in ways that now benefit those far to his left and right. Opposition to the symbolic value of his presidency has nurtured white supremacy back into the mainstream of American politics. His healthcare is not a serious solution, but some aspects of it have made a small, positive contribution in the lives of people I know. His pursuit of Osama bin Laden created an opportunity to symbolically close the window on a frightening period in U.S. history, but he chose to leave it open so he could bomb weddings. Now President Trump is the beneficiary. Obama had pretenses of consensus-building, but rarely and belatedly pursued it, leaving not just Republicans but fellow Democrats out of conversations. His two Supreme Court justices temporarily stalled the court's rightward swing, but his failure (or disinterest) to grasp the political situation in 2016, much less restock the lower courts, ensured that this was a stopgap solution. He came around late publicly to gay marriage, but I think his beneficence had a meaningful value. He let advisors overrun him while addressing the recession, and Wall Street benefited first and most. He failed to address the newly accessible reality of police violence in 2014. Protests from both of these moments have produced effective community organizers who understand the rarity of the current moment and seize it, producing more genuine change than most politicians can dream of. Finally, his late wave of executive actions demonstrated the terrifying power of an unchecked Presidency, which the next administration has all-too-eagerly embraced. This presidency, which is explicitly not Garrow's project, deserves to be covered in the same level of exhaustive detail.

** spoiler alert ** Finally finished the book today after multiple sittings. Extremely well researched. Gives a very intimate view of Barack Obama’s early life before he became the President. An astonishing achievement in biography writing. Must read.

A remarkable work of contemporary history, Garrow's work paints a meticulous portrait of one of the most talented politicians of our times. The book is long and does sometimes feel a bit too onerous, especially when the author veers into descriptions of tangential events. But it is a work of history and not popular non-fiction, more concerned with rigour than trying to please the reader. Despite criticism of the book when it was first published, it paints what I consider to be an overwhelmingly positive portrait of Barack Obama. Except for the Epilogue, the author is careful not to make his own judgements and to let the reader make her or his own assessments. What emerges is a fascinating narrative of a self-made man searching for identity, purpose and status. It is only disappointing that the book seems to trail off the closer the reader gets to Obama's presidential run and presidency. I felt that the book deserved to be divided into Obama's early life until his Democratic National Convention speech in 2004. And another volume from that moment until the end of his presidency in 2017. For that reason, the last chapters seem somewhat rushed and more scant in detail.Some critics have complained that Garrow gives far too much weight to Obama's former partners, especially Sheila Miyoshi Jager. In fact that doesn't come across in the reading - while Jager is a key character in his story she is but one of several important individuals documented in the book who influence Obama's life. What is clear, however, is the authors assiduous search for the man behind the myth. Therefore, it is both wise and insightful that the author chooses to provide an intimate portrayal of Obama at the moments when he was still defining himself and before he was a public figure. What emerges is a more complex, human and driven figure than the previously understood.Before I listened to this book I read many reviews say that the book does not provide much new insight into Barack Obama. This is simple false. The book provides amazing insights into the man, not least that his breakout book 'Dreams from my father' is a work of fiction. That shadows another surprising revelation, namely, the extent to which the public figure Barack Obama is such a carefully created and crafted figure, down to the carefully choreographed and practised speeches and veneer of sincere, calm and casual demeanour. Obama was close to moneyed interests from the very start of his political career, and in many ways is a conservative politician. Another remarkable revelation is that he simply was not brought up as an African-American but rather as the son of a solidly middle class white family who only discovered the African American community much later in life and, arguably, only once he decided on a political career.The book also reveals the impressive characteristics of the man: a brilliant scholar and lawyer, a man of iron will and inner strength, an inspiring orator with presence, charisma and a natural leader, and a thoroughly decent family man committed to his wife and family if entirely absent from them during the formative period of his political career. Not least, the book demonstrates what an extremely self-controlled and ambitious person whose clear focus was on the presidency, yet without much commitment to any particularly political or ideological agenda. That picture, ultimately, gave me new found respect for Obama even if ultimately it also made me feel so disappointed that he did not stand for anything more substantial than the symbolism of the first black American President.Both interesting and ominous, I cannot but help leaving this book with the impression that Barack Obama represents the limits of the liberal American myth, one that is crafted so much on appearance and marketing, but which ultimately is more focused on style and impressions than substance. If the book reveals Obama's limits and failings, it does so by revealing the failings of the American liberal democratic experiment (which, for the record, I must confess I deeply admire and hope can survive the present political and social crisis that great country is facing!). For that reason alone, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary American and global history. It will also prove useful for anyone wanting to understand how the individual can succeed in politics in an increasingly polarised and market-driven political economy.

Dr. David Garrow's monumental work on Obama highlights the complex and often troubled character who was "destined" to become our 44th President. Haunted by the ghosts of his past, and driven by the need to enact change, we see in this book all of the major factors that molded Obama into the person he is today. Overall, I learned a great deal. Garrow covered all the bases: Indonesia, racial identity questions, college life, law school, U Chicago, relationships, community organizing, running for office, and more. You'll learn about the key (and not so key) individuals in his life, as well as moments that changed his life. Ultimately, you'll read about the successes/failures he had as a politician, husband, and human being.With that, this 1078-page book (plus a few hundred pages of notes, bibliography, etc.) goes into *immense* detail (overly so in my opinion) about all of said factors. We not only are introduced to his parents, but get an in-depth look into their lives. We get a background of his teachers. We know his grades, his classmates, and the classes he took. The contents of his intimate letters to past girlfriends are publicized. How his students saw him, the incomes he made, and the details of how he bought his house is also mentioned. Again, there is just a ridiculous amount of detail that only Obama scholars would find most interesting. Still, the book is worth reading even if you're not a scholar. This is because Garrow does a splendid job of presenting Obama in a balanced light. For example, he'll frequently note how others see him as brilliant. He'll also note how Obama exaggerates his claims, or even outright lie. He even went as far as saying "Dreams From My Father" wasn't an autobiography, but rather a work of historical fiction. However, the epilogue had a notably different tone with many details or context missing. This section mostly zooms through his presidency and how chaotic, isolated, and unpopular he became amongst even his own party. The man we see in the epilogue is not the same man who entered office, and Garrow made sure to bring that point home, albeit in a mostly critical way. One notable example: Garrow discusses Obama's failure regarding the healthcare.gov website, citing that he cared more about winning than implementing policy. This was a particularly disappointing section, especially since it neglected the administration's outreach to tech companies to repair it. Another example mentions his weakness in foreign policy, citing the infamous red line and Putin's aggression; yet there was no mention of TPP, the climate accords, or even Cuba - a policy shift Obama wanted even as a senate candidate. It is because of the epilogue and the sheer amount of unnecessary information that prevents me from giving 5 stars. A true rating would be 3.5, but I'll round up to 4 since this book is masterfully researched. In short, the book is worth reading if you want to know much about Obama, both the person and the politician. Depending on your interest level, it might be worth skimming sections. Those who are interested in his presidency, though, should instead find another book more akin to Bob Woodward or Jonathan Alter .

The most common word I saw used for the book was "long." Well, yes. That should be apparent as soon as one picks it up or checks the page count on their Kindle/Nook. More on that to come.Having said that, I can excuse much of the detail because of the continuing mythos of Obama. There still are those today who insist he's a Kenyan and not American - hard to make that argument after reading this book as there's no doubt Garrow would have uncovered it. The same goes for the notion of Obama as a closet Muslim, which in itself is disproven by his membership at Trinity Church. If there were any hint of that possibility, there's virtually no doubt it would be in this book as well because, at least until his presidency, everything seems to be.The Obama that is described here is balanced overall. He unquestionably is extremely intelligent and appears to have an idea of what he wants to accomplish. At the same time, he also is arrogant, aloof, obsessed with his own destiny while disclaiming ambition. He has an ability to memorize a crowd through the delivery of his speech while not necessarily saying a great deal.It has been said that Garrow handled Obama's presidency brutally in the final chapter, actually the epilogue. This chapter is the one where there seems to be no sense of balance, though his overall conclusions of Obama's failure to live up to his own promise of rising above partisan politics are not inaccurate. But the balance and detail fades here as well. For instance, Garrow mentions the polls that show the number of people who wrongly believe Obama wasn't an American citizen but does not comment or add any perspective as to why this line of thought existed. The poll is cited without context and apropos of nothing. And in general, a mere 60 electronic pages (and fewer on paper) are dedicated to these eight years when far more is devoted to Obama's high school days playing basketball and smoking weed. It's a curious editorial choice.I don't disagree that in some areas, the book is far too detailed. Particularly in the early chapters, it feels the text would have benefited from the firm hand of an editor; later, it would have been helpful to not have a dozen cited quotes all saying virtually the same thing. There's little question the book would have been different in the hands of a Chernow or Brands.Does Garrow actually like Obama? Does it really matter? The book punctures a good deal of the mythology that existed before and is growing now in light of what now occupies the White House. But to say his presidency was an unqualified success is a stretch of the highest order. If only Garrow had spent more time delving into this rather than nights eating Chinese food at Columbia.

I read it all!!!... except the footnotes. It took me six months. I was surprised to learn that Barack Obama also read it all, in prepublication manuscript form, during the Crossfire Hurricane months August to October 2016. It took historian David Garrow 18 months of 24/7 writing to pull the book together after NINE years of research. He had research assistants, yes; but he personally interviewed 1000 people, including Barack Obama. It is mind boggling to me how he digested and organized the massive detail in this book!I learned a lot about how politics works as the book reports in elaborate detail Barack Obama's rise through local and state politics to the U.S. Senate and Presidency. I do not see any room in events for a puppet master or international sponsor. (There is the peculiar matter of the Obamas dining nearly every night at the homes of the Khalidis and the Ayers in Hyde Park that probably warrants more digging.) One of the things that made the book interesting for me was that it opens on Chicago's South Side where Obama did his community development work. I relate very deeply to the steel mill closures and collapse of neighborhoods the book details, because this is where I grew up. David Garrow captures the economic and social history of Calumet/South Chicago very well. That gave me a measure for the rest of the book.I found quite a few good interviews with David Garrow on YouTube that cover highlights of the book. I strongly recommend them! My one grievance is that this book in hardback is very difficult to manage. The publisher should have left a deeper margin at the center seam so that the book does not have to be laid absolutely flat to be read. I expect it is much easier to handle in the paperback version.

This behemoth is perhaps the most detailed biography I've ever read. Anything from the scores of Barrack's high school basketball games to the amounts of the Obama's yearly tax payments are included in this incredibly well researched and documented book. It took me about two weeks to trek through this thing, but it was never dull. Garrow did an incredible job of taking the hundreds (thousands?) of resources he used to collect data for this book and then compiling them into a coherent story. The other piece that stood out to love about this book is how "uninterested" of an approach Garrow took. If he has a political leaning or an opinion on Obama, his thoughts, or anything else, you couldn't tell in this book. The only opinions you get through this book are those of the individuals he quotes throughout the book. Just a phenomenal piece of work that anyone interested in understanding Obama and his rise to power should make the trek through. Obama lovers and Obama haters will both probably hate this book. Garrow offers insights into Obama's best and worst moments and everything in-between which will cause a lot of frustration for those with presuppositions. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is committed to taking an objective look into Obama's life in detail until his decision to run for president (the end of the book offers a bit of insight into his run and a little of his Presidency, but not to the same level as the rest of the book takes until then). My one caution, however, is to make sure your doorway is big enough to get this book through and that you'll have enough room in your house to get it open. This may be a good time to take the e-book or audiobook route.

As piercing a look at one of the most enigmatic of public leaders of the last decade, we see the life and times of the man who would become the first African-American president in US history. Written for a reading audience in a future when all the principal actors are long gone, this 1,100 page biography is meticulously researched and written. Though critiques for its length are common, its clear that decades from now, this book will be used as the standard for researchers.It is a fairly critical piece, which the epilogue does its best to quickly summarize, but its central message is very clear: A functional orphan, who did his best to run away from the failures of his parents, who sacrificed much to achieve what he saw was his destiny. Ultimately, these amazing strengths of his led to his undoing once he finally reached the mountaintop, leading inevitably to the question: "What does it profit a man to gain the world, only to lose ones soul?"The reader is also made to understand our complicity in the 'Obamamania' phenomenon, as our desire to escape the partisan Bush years led to our projection of him as a white knight, which he certainly could not have been, and the observation of Obama being rightfully critical of the charismatic leader being unable to build lasting political change is richly ironic. If you really want to understand this man, then this is the book for you. Hero worshipers need not begin.

“Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama.” is normally not a book I’d read, much less purchase. It’s long, more than 1,000 pages, and detailed to the point that you have a hard time focusing on chapters averaging about 100 pages. Also my political perspective is polar opposite the book’s subject, Barack H. Obama. That said, Garrow does an outstanding job of humanizing Obama which enabled me to regard Obama as more that a political being. My recommendation to those interested, is to read the beginning of the book carefully because there Garrow does an outstanding job introducing you to Chicago in the 1970s and 1980s and it’s a fascinating place. Then skip to the Epilogue where Garrow provides a vivid description of Obama the iconic, refreshing politician and Obama the flawed, lonely, naïve, superficial politician. Obama is the politician who believed he could elevate the country and achieve the vision embodied in our Declaration of Independence and in our Constitution without embodying either and when he realized that this goal was beyond even him, he played golf.