Rising Star:  The Making of Barack Obama

By David J. Garrow

William Morrow, New York, 1,472 pages, $45

He is the most transformational American public figure since Franklin Roosevelt.  But few know the real story of Barack Obama's formative years.  With depth and meticulousness, David Garrow's new book pulls back the curtain on Obama's family, upbringing, college years, personal reinventions, mentors, romances, career choices, law school accomplishments, marriage and rise in Illinois politics.  In the years to come, this book will be the standard for biographies dealing with Obama's pre-2005 years.

Written for a mass audience, the book should be of particular interest to lawyers because of the experiences that inspired Obama to pursue a legal career, the accomplishments of his Harvard Law School education, the advantages that meaningful work experience provided him over his law school classmates, the financial challenges produced by his career choices and the strains those challenges put on his marriage.

The book is not perfect.  The last 220 pages cover Obama's career in Washington, which the author finds wanting.  The quality of this portion pales in comparison to the first nine chapters.  Conceptually, the book would have been tidier if it had ended on election night, 2008.

The book has three great strengths.  The first is the hundreds of interviews the author  conducted of virtually every significant person who was a part of Obama's life until his mid-40s. The second is the historical research that provides context and substance to the story.  The third is the author's ability to weave this incredible trove of material into an effective narrative.

The spectrum of people interviewed for the book is breathtaking.  It includes friends, classmates, teachers, coaches, co-workers, employers, mentors, staffers, rivals, and admirers from Obama's childhood, adolescence, high school, colleges, post-college jobs, law school, law firms, professorships, nonprofit foundation work and politics.

Two of the author's best finds were Alex McNear and Genevieve Cook, Obama girlfriends from his mid-20s, who disclosed extensive letters, diaries and intimacies.  The book treats this fascinating material with tact and balance.

In 1960, Obama's parents met at the University of Hawaii.  Barack Obama Sr. was a Kenyan graduate student and Ann Dunham was a freshman. In November 1960, Ann became pregnant.  In February 1961, Obama's parents wed but never lived together.

Ten months after Obama was born in August 1961, his father left Hawaii, attended Harvard and later returned to Kenya where alcoholism and discouragement derailed a once-promising career.  Obama's mother earned degrees in anthropology and held several professional posts, mostly overseas.

Until he was 9 years-old, Obama's mother raised him.  In 1970, however, Obama was sent to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents, Stan and Madeline Dunham.  Thereafter, Obama was raised by the Dunhams, with whom he enjoyed a healthy relationship and was known as “Barry.”   As recounted by the author, Obama possessed feelings of abandonment by his parents throughout his adolescence and early adulthood.

In 1971, Obama finally met his father. During the Honolulu visit, Obama's father delivered an impressive speech to his son's class about Kenya, took him to a Dave Brubeck concert and gave him his first basketball.  After the visit, however, Obama never saw his father again.  When his father died in 1982, the event barely registered with Obama.

Obama's first two college years were spent at Occidental, where he underachieved and partied frequently.  It was there that he began to discover his black identity.  By the end of 1980, Obama insisted that he no longer wanted to be called Barry.  From then on, he was Barack.

In 1981, Obama transferred to Columbia where he applied himself and earned top grades.  Following his graduation in 1983, Obama worked in New York for two years, first as a magazine editor and then as a CUNY student organizer.

The author concludes that Obama graduated from college without student loan debt.  Thus unencumbered, Obama was free to pursue his passion, which came in the form of a $10,000 job with the Developing Communities Project (DPC), an activist organization located in Chicago.

The book masterfully recreates the 1985 Chicago that greeted Obama, particularly the troubled south side neighborhoods that were in crisis over disappearing factory jobs and rising crime.  During Obama's 1985-88 stint with DPC, he organized support for job, education and public health initiatives.   In so doing, he traveled the south side, discovered its people, networked with its stakeholders, organized programs, raised funds, matured, gained confidence and envisioned his own political future.  It is the first significant glimpse of who Obama was to become.

During these Chicago years, Obama was inspired by Harold Washington, who in 1983 was elected as the city's first black mayor.  Obama aspired to follow in Washington's footsteps.  This motivated him to pursue law school just as Washington had done in the early 1950s.

According to the author, Obama turned down a full scholarship to attend Washington's alma mater, Northwestern, to attend Harvard, which Obama had to finance with student loans.   Reasoning that he could not realize his potential unless he attended Harvard, the 27 year-old Obama left for Cambridge in 1988.

The best part of the book covers Obama at Harvard, where he displayed a confidence and maturity that often separated him from his younger classmates, graduated magna cum laude and was elected as the first black president of the law review.

One of the author's startling revelations is that Dreams From My Father, written by Obama in the early 1990s, contains much fiction and personal reinvention.  In a book that exposes many warts, this one has probably caused Obama the most grief.

During an internship at Sidley & Austin, Obama met his future wife, Michelle, who was an associate at the firm.  With great candor, the book chronicles the couple's courtship and early years of marriage, which were afflicted by financial struggles. Strong-willed, Michelle voiced many doubts about her husband's budding political career, which kept him away from home too often and paid too little.  Now that the public service is concluded and the eight-figure book deals have been signed, let's hope that he makes it up to her.

Jeffrey Winn is a management liability attorney with Chubb, a global insurer, and a member of the executive committee of the New York City Bar Association.