Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama

This bio of Barack Obama has been lauded for the author's intense research. But the result is almost 1,400 pages!! It was so heavy the seller had it delivered by mail-bag. Printed in small font, this book has gone from keenly awaited bio to a reference book. Even a Pulitzer-Prize winning author needs a (better) editor.

I tried reading this book and I managed to get through parts but it is too long and too detailed to hold the interest of many readers. This is basically a story of a politician--just about any politician in the United States. They are all consummate users, and once they've gotten what they want from someone they move on to the next person or body they need to exploit. In this Obama is no different from any of the others, although he benefited from the deep need of white liberals who badly wanted to vote for a "nice Negro", to use old fashioned language.(No doubt the same consideration facilitated Obama's ascent from his earliest days at Occidental College and Columbia.) As for blacks, I can easily understand the overwhelming importance of Obama's presidency to them--at least in symbolic terms. But my understanding is they were disappointed because they expected him to essentially govern for them, something which of course he couldn't do because the United States isn't South Africa or Kenya. Another point. There is a certain symmetry between the career of Obama's father (which is related in exhaustive detail in the opening chapters) and that of the son. Both were big phonies who knew how to use the system and (in this particular case) what might be called Guilt Ridden White America. But the times were far more favorable to the son and look how far he has gone. Again, I can't emphasize enough that this is the story of any politician in the United States, it just so happens to be our 44th president.

This book is brilliant because it was written by an author, David Garrow, who's not only mastered the art of beautiful prose but also possesses unparalleled skills in researching his subjects (which is why he won the Pulitzer for 'Bearing the Cross', the bio of Martin Luther King, Jr.). Alas, this book is also sorrowful because it is clear Garrow began his biography of Barack Hussein Obama honestly believing in the hope and change his subject promised - only to be bitterly disappointed by the man his research ultimately uncovered. As 'Rising Star' describes it, Obama began his life in Chicago as an idealistic community organizer whose ambition was to change the world. Alas, this ambition was not realized when he failed to secure any funding (a failure that would sadly be repeated again and again). Undeterred, Obama simply shifted his focus to public office and prepared to run for the Illinois state legislature. That position, he felt sure, would give him the funds he needed to make his dreams come true. But there was a problem. The voters in Obama's district were black - and he wasn't. That is, he was not perceived by them as such and, to be honest, Barack had never thought of himself as black either. Up until the moment he first ran for public office, Barack had never defined himself along racial lines but instead along emotional ones - that of a lost child abandoned by his father and mother. By and large, Barack's life had been devoid of black associations. He had next to no black friends growing up in Hawaii; in college he'd persisted in avoiding black friendships, teachers and the black movement as a whole. The black persona was simply not how he defined himself - but it would have to be if he hoped to achieve public office in Chicago. What to do? Well, the solution which all of Barack's advisers gave was for him to marry a woman who WAS black. Thus, Barack abandoned the beautiful half-white, half-Japanese woman, Sheila Miyoshi Jager, whom he'd been living with for nearly two years in Chicago (and whom he'd originally intended to marry) and instead proposed marriage to Michelle Robinson. It was a political move which Barack would pay bitterly for. Michelle was not interested in politics, she hated it. What she loved was money. However, in the beginning of their marriage she grudgingly acquiesced to Barack's low-paying position with the Illinois State legislature because Michelle herself was earning a six-figure salary at Sidley Austin. But then suddenly, mysteriously, Michelle left the firm AND forfeited her law license (after barely 3 years of practice) to take a public job which paid barely one-third of her old income. She was not pleased about this and immediately demanded that her husband leave politics and get a job at a prestigious law firm that would bring in the salary she craved. Barack balked at that and in...