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Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama

David J. Garrow

3.56 · Rating details · 333 ratings · 92 reviews

Rising Star is the definitive account of Barack Obama's formative years that made him the man who became the forty-fourth president of the United States—from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Bearing the Cross

Barack Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention instantly catapulted him into the national spotlight and led to his election four years later as A Rising Star is the definitive account of Barack Obama's formative years that made him the man who became the forty-fourth president of the United States—from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Bearing the Cross

Barack Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention instantly catapulted him into the national spotlight and led to his election four years later as America's first African-American president. In this penetrating biography, David J. Garrow delivers an epic work about the life of Barack Obama, creating a rich tapestry of a life little understood, until now.

Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama captivatingly describes Barack Obama's tumultuous upbringing as a young black man attending an almost-all-white, elite private school in Honolulu while being raised almost exclusively by his white grandparents. After recounting Obama's college years in California and New York, Garrow charts Obama's time as a Chicago community organizer, working in some of the city's roughest neighborhoods; his years at the top of his Harvard Law School class; and his return to Chicago, where Obama honed his skills as a hard-knuckled politician, first in the state legislature and then as a candidate for the United States Senate.

Detailing a scintillating, behind-the-scenes account of Obama's 2004 speech, a moment that labeled him the Democratic Party's "rising star," Garrow also chronicles Obama's four years in the Senate, weighing his stands on various issues against positions he had taken years earlier, and recounts his thrilling run for the White House in 2008.

In Rising Star, David J. Garrow has created a vivid portrait that reveals not only the people and forces that shaped the future president but also the ways in which he used those influences to serve his larger aspirations. This is a gripping read about a young man born into uncommon family circumstances, whose faith in his own talents came face-to-face with fantastic ambitions and a desire to do good in the world. Most important, Rising Star is an extraordinary work of biography—tremendous in its research and storytelling, and brilliant in its analysis of the all-too-human struggles of one of the most fascinating politicians of our time. ...more

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Published May 9th 2017 by William Morrow

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Jun 20, 2017 Darlene rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: biography-us-presidents

This book,'Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama' by Dr. David Garrow, is difficult for me to write about. At 1,472 pages (including a couple hundred pages of source notes), this book was a behemoth and quite dense although extremely well-researched and documented. In an interview with Dr. Garrow, he stated that he spent 9 years conducting interviews and researching the material for this biography of Barack Obama. Although the book seemed at times overly detailed, I admit that I am in awe of D This book,'Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama' by Dr. David Garrow, is difficult for me to write about. At 1,472 pages (including a couple hundred pages of source notes), this book was a behemoth and quite dense although extremely well-researched and documented. In an interview with Dr. Garrow, he stated that he spent 9 years conducting interviews and researching the material for this biography of Barack Obama. Although the book seemed at times overly detailed, I admit that I am in awe of Dr. Garrow's diligence in taking on such a project.

I have read a few reviews of this biography and I don't agree that Dr. Garrow was particularly biased in favor of or against Mr. Obama. In fact, I was actually quite surprised that incidents and conversations were described but no real judgment by the author seemed noticeably detectable. I think it is fair that I admit straight away that I was enthralled with Barack Obama from the first time I listened to his moving speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He was poised, intelligent, well-spoken and his oratory skills were inspiring. Plus, he is close in age to myself so I felt a certain camaraderie with him. I volunteered for his presidential campaigns and voted for him twice. But I also have to admit that I became somewhat less than enchanted during the course of his presidency. It seemed to me more and more that the man I had admired during his campaign had somehow morphed into another man in the White House. Reading this book has encouraged me to examine these feelings I have described; and I have come to the conclusion that perhaps it is not Barack Obama that I became disenchanted with specifically but perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I have become increasingly disenchanted with the way government in general functions... or does NOT function.

If you have read any of the myriad of books on the market about Barack Obama... including his OWN books 'Dreams From My Father' and 'The Audacity of Hope', then you already have a fairly good idea of what you will find in 'Rising Star'. Dr. Garrow simply provides many, many more details. The book begins in Chicago; and I learned a great deal about the political, economic and social climate in Chicago beginning in the 1980s and continuing to the 2000s... probably more than I WANTED to know. Later in the book, I realized the point Dr. Garrow was making. He emphasized Chicago in this writing because he believes that THIS is where Barack Obama.. future state senator, U.S. Senator and 44th President was created.

In thinking about this book, I realized that it did not provide much that was new to me. If you are familiar with the basic facts of Mr. Obama's life (as I am)... his growing up in Honolulu and a short period in Indonesia... his post-secondary schooling at Occidental College, Columbia University and Harvard Law School... his involvement in community organizing in New York and then Chicago.. and finally his introduction to politics by becoming an Illinois state senator, U. S. Senator and finally being elected as the first African American President of the United States... you probably won't learn a whole lot you didn't already know.... you will simply be better able to fill in more details of this interesting life.

In the end, I think what I DID learn is that the 44th President of the United States is like ALL people... he is complex. He is not just one thing. Despite the 1,000 interviews Dr. Garrow undertook over that 9 year period, I don't think even he succeeded in capturing the essence of who Barack Obama.. the person and the man.. is. Mr. Obama seems at times introspective and brooding.. a sort of loner who sometimes appears to be floundering when trying to decide what his purpose in life should be; and at other times, he is charismatic and possesses the ability to inspire hope and optimism with his fiery oration. He sometimes seems cool and emotionally detached and yet at others he openly sheds tears over the senseless mass shooting of school children at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Yes, he is a complicated man. Initially, I was disappointed in this book. Dr. Garrow seemed at times to portray Barack Obama as someone who had spent many years crafting the persona he wished to present to the country and the world... he seemed to me another politician in a long line of disappointing politicians. I've thought a great deal about this and I have come to the conclusion that really, isn't that what ALL people do in some way? We all have a face we present to the world but the true essence of who we are often remains hidden behind the mask we carefully construct. People see what they want to see and they believe what they want to believe.

If you are a detail-oriented person, you may enjoy this biography. I felt Barack Obama was fairly presented... whether you are a fan of President Obama or you are critical of him, I think you will find both things to like and dislike in this book. I admire Dr.Garrow's dedication and persistence in pursuing what was a huge research project. ...more

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Jun 01, 2017 Erin rated it did not like it

Shelves: biography-challenge-2017, popsugar-2017-challenge, black-love, politics, june-2017

The New York Times book review described Rising Star as "tedious & bloated" I agree 100%.

Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama is a mammoth endeavor. This book is very,very,very long and to make matters worse I didn't learn anything important that I didn't already know. This book could've really used a editor.. Badly. You would think at well over 1000 pages you would learn something about our 44th President but nope. Nothing.. The entire 8 year Obama Presidency is smushed into a 50 page epilo ...more

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Jun 22, 2017 Chris rated it it was amazing

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 ...more

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Jul 28, 2017 Ron Turner rated it really liked it

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 whe 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. ...more

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Feb 11, 2019 Steve rated it it was ok

https://bestpresidentialbios.com/2019...

David Garrow’s “Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama” was published in 2017 and named a “Best Book of 2017” by The Washington Post. Garrow is a professor of Law & History at the University of Pittsburgh and received the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in Biography for “Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.”

Spanning 1,078 pages of text (with more than 300 additional pages of notes and bibliography), this weight https://bestpresidentialbios.com/2019...

David Garrow’s “Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama” was published in 2017 and named a “Best Book of 2017” by The Washington Post. Garrow is a professor of Law & History at the University of Pittsburgh and received the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in Biography for “Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.”

Spanning 1,078 pages of text (with more than 300 additional pages of notes and bibliography), this weighty tome is the product of nearly a decade of research. And while I was aware of the book’s mixed reputation, it promised a thorough review of Obama’s life (up through his presidency) so I was optimistic about its potential. Unfortunately, this proved to be one of the least satisfying presidential biographies I’ve ever read.

“Rising Star” quickly proves dull, tedious and frequently pointless. The narrative tracks Obama’s day-to-day movements and conversations with a level of granularity that is seemingly impossible…and entirely undesirable. The superfluous detail embedded in the text is suffocating and Garrow is unable (or unwilling) to synthesize and distill the facts he unearthed into salient observations and themes – leaving this biography almost completely devoid of overarching themes.

In any biography some level of detail is needed to provide background and context, of course, and additional detail is required to identify connections and support conclusions. But there is no discernible effort to separate the mundane from the consequential. And, instead, the narrative dives so deeply into the weeds that for the majority of the book the reader has no sense for what is pertinent and whether there even is a “big picture.”

This biography possesses numerous other flaws including an odd dependence on testimony from a former girlfriend, a peculiar fascination with Obama’s sex life and unseemly criticism of competing biographies by David Remnick and David Maraniss. And although Garrow takes the time to cover Obama’s two-term presidency, its relative brevity (fewer than thirty pages) stands in stark contrast to the previous thousand-plus pages of pre-presidential minutiae.

Fortunately for the persistent reader there are moments of merit. Garrow’s introduction to Jeremiah Wright and Trinity United Church is particularly interesting and sets up one of the book’s few threads – the evolving relationship between Obama and his pastor. In addition, the Harvard Law Review, Michelle Robinson, Valerie Jarrett and the Chicago political machine each receive enlightening coverage.

Garrow also provides good insight into Obama’s failed run for a seat in the House of Representatives as well as his successful campaign for the U.S. Senate. And coverage of Obama’s deliberations relating to his potential candidacy for president of the United States is quite engaging.

Overall, however, “Rising Star” is most noticeable for just one thing: its utterly exhausting coverage of Barack Obama’s life. The book is impressive in scale and Garrow deserves credit for this detailed reference on Obama’s pre-presidency. But for fans of great presidential biographies, “Rising Star” will prove little more than a mind-numbing exercise in patience and pointless perseverance.

Overall rating: 2 stars ...more

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May 22, 2017 BonnieL rated it liked it

A difficult book to rate - with this genre, it's not really possible to "like" the book - it's more that one can appreciate the work without necessarily agreeing with the author or accepting his conclusions. The book is 1400+ pages, over 7 pounds, extremely small type. It seems to be meticulously researched, has 400 pages of notes, references and index. It ends just before the 2008 campaign so the author probably has a second volume planned. It is not particularly complimentary to the former Pre ...more

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Sep 16, 2017 Joshua Taylor rated it liked it · review of another edition

Few books have provoked such disparate feelings from me upon completion. On the one hand, this is a tour-de-force - a massive book (about 1100 pages of main content plus hundreds of pages of notes) that took nine years to research and write, including interviews with over 1000 people. The book provided a great deal of insight into Obama's history, and I am now much more familiar with the grand arc of his story and how it all fits together, including what exactly he did as a community organizer. Few books have provoked such disparate feelings from me upon completion. On the one hand, this is a tour-de-force - a massive book (about 1100 pages of main content plus hundreds of pages of notes) that took nine years to research and write, including interviews with over 1000 people. The book provided a great deal of insight into Obama's history, and I am now much more familiar with the grand arc of his story and how it all fits together, including what exactly he did as a community organizer.

Unfortunately, there are also massive failings in this book, of which I simply feel I must document a few:

(1) Where was the editor? If this bloated morass is the result of a significantly edited work, then I shudder to think what mundane minutiae were originally included. Such completely unnecessary details as the name of the players on Obama's high school basketball team and the precise number of students in each law school class he taught would recommend the class survived the cut. This made the book at times a slog.

(2) At one point Garrow refers to Obama's clear understanding of racial issues being demonstrated by the references he used for a law school paper he wrote. The author of two of those works, which were cited as seminal in the field? Why, Garrow of course, not that he acknowledged it in the text. I'm not sure if this was meant as a tongue-in-cheek joke or was serious, but it sure seemed somewhat tasteless and rather ego-stroking.

(3) There were numerous times in the book that Garrow seemed to want to suggest something had happened but didn't have the goods to just come out and say it. As a result, he simply wrote sections as suggestively as possible. One of the best examples comes from Obama's high school marijuana smoking days, where Garrow is sure to tell us all about Obama's drug source, a porn-obsessed thirtysomething named Gay Ray, who "hint hint" was known to try to get those he supplied interested in watching porn with him and offered alternatives to cash payment. The implication that Obama exchanged sexual favors for marijuana comes through very clearly despite never being said. This type of thing is certainly not isolated - the repeated references to a woman named Sheila Jager with whom Obama had a relationship prior to meeting Michelle Obama suggest some sort of vague, unnamed continuing relationship, possibly even post marriage. This is clearly implied but never stated. Garrow hides too frequently behind rumor and innuendo.

(4) While I like Obama I have no issue with many criticisms of him. He could be "lazy" or at least undisciplined when it came to making relationships with Congress, and it cost him. He could and did act intellectually superior. And yet, the fifty page epilogue, covering Obama's presidency, is written as one long dirge recounting failure after failure as Obama spirals downward into a funk and takes the country with it. While I can stomach much of this critique, I simply don't remember the Obama administration as a constant string of executive failures, but more as an administration burdened by a Republican opposition that was ruthless and set out to destroy Obama from day one. Nowhere in this epilogue is Republican intransigence so much as mentioned. This seems a cardinal sin of omission from an epilogue that is so long.

There is much more I could say, but I will cut it short here and simply say, beware gentle reader. You will be informed but not especially entertained. ...more

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May 28, 2017 Ken Ransom rated it liked it

Shelves: american-politics

3-1/2

OMG, at more than 1,084 pages (plus 275 pages of notes), Rising Star based on more than 1,000 interviews and consultations, and just about everything that was written about the 44th president. Sometimes the book feels tedious and just too much of a good thing. Incidents and Statements are repeated often enough that a reader might feel they've lost their place and were rereading what they'd already read.

If there is an advantage to this it is that the reader can cherry pick those things that ...more

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May 05, 2017 Owlseyes marked it as to-read

Shelves: rosy-biography, politics, community-organizer, biography, construction-of-political-identity, cocaine-use, ambitious-obama, chicago, african-american-community, by-the-way-where-s-fran-m-davis

Before Michelle, Barack Obama asked another woman to marry him. Then politics got in the way.
in:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/b...

Obama biography stirs controversy with tales of politics, sex and a rising star
in:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...

"it was...,guess who..." ...more

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Jul 29, 2017 Andy Miller rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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 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 few
As 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 later
His 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 time
My 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 ...more

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Aug 30, 2017 R. Lawrence rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Very good book, but learned nothing new. Could have used another Editor, the opening chapters concerning the steel companies in Chicago were quite tedious. Very long book but as I said learned nothing new! But well worth the Read.

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Dec 28, 2020 Dan Alper rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, presidential-bio

(Should probably be 3.5 stars)
This book is a slog - the author has been compared to Robert Caro and other tireless researchers of his ilk, and he has certainly done his work. But whereas Caro, for one, is able to not only prove to you that he has done immeasurable research while weaving it within a succinct narrative, Garrow often seems to want to display the fact that he has done the work - and he clearly has - seemingly to no end. There are multiple instances where he quotes random folks in an (Should probably be 3.5 stars)
This book is a slog - the author has been compared to Robert Caro and other tireless researchers of his ilk, and he has certainly done his work. But whereas Caro, for one, is able to not only prove to you that he has done immeasurable research while weaving it within a succinct narrative, Garrow often seems to want to display the fact that he has done the work - and he clearly has - seemingly to no end. There are multiple instances where he quotes random folks in an off side paragraph for no immediate indication as to why, leaving you to assume it will be called back to at a later date, but never is. Additionally, there seems to be a lot of low key desire to show his work in this book - much like Caro, it appears as if Garrow interviewed everyone that even remotely associated with Obama as he came up, and goddamnit, he’s gonna show you that he did it. The chapter on Obama’s tenure at Harvard Law and as President of Law Review particularly stands out, as Garrow seemingly insists on quoting literally everyone on Law Review staff those years about how he wasn’t usually in his office and was instead smoking outside, which, ok - we fucking get it. Not entirely sure that anyone - literally anyone - needs a breakdown of the editorial deliberations that accompanied every issue of the Law Review under Obama’s term, down to every last comment - but perhaps that is me.

The book I read is 1078 pages before end notes and everything else - there’s a really tight 800 page illumination of Obama as he ascended to the Presidency here, I just wish the author and/or his editors had found it. There’s also a version of this book that is better edited yet even more blown out and split out over two volumes, although I can’t imagine the publisher figured that was economically viable. At the end of the day, this may be the most definitive illumination of Obama’s evolution to the Presidency - for good or ill - but it is not all that enjoyable to get there in large swathes of the book.

Also - the last 50 pages where the author rushes through the Dem primary and then the entirety of the Presidency are egregious. You’ve just made me slog through over a thousand pages, in a book that ostensibly wants to be the definitive account of Barack Obama prior to becoming President, and in some cases gives me hour by hour recaps of days on end (again - see my point above about the author’s need to show his research work) - and then you give super short shrift to everything after he decides to run. Either end it there, since most of current readers would understand what happens next, or give me another 100 or so pages (because I’m basically pot committed by that point) about the campaign up until his election night speech, and end it on election night with his victory speech - ostensibly that’s why I was reading the book in the first place, to get a handle on what defined and created Obama prior to that moment. And I definitely don’t need the authors judgements on the fallacies of other Obama books which came out at the time, which happen frequently in the last brushed off chapter. (Garrow also not so subtly toots his own horn about his previous books on the civil rights era as well earlier in the book).

I’m happy I read this, I learned quite a bit, but I’m happy the slog is over and I’m finally done. ...more

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Feb 06, 2019 Kent rated it liked it

Shelves: politics, biography

There is much that I enjoyed about this hefty biography. I may have liked it more than the 3 star rating, but some of the tediousness pushes the rating down a bit. Slogging through the opening chapters recounting the history of the steel industry and its woes in Chicago for several decades before Obama came on the scene was more than a biography reader may have needed, for instance.

But, still there were many things to gain from this reading. Getting through this massive work, I learned the follo ...more

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Jun 09, 2017 Beverly rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, african-black, biography

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 ...more

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Jun 12, 2017 Emily rated it really liked it

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.

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Jun 16, 2018 Michael Wear rated it it was amazing

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. ...more

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May 29, 2020 Megan Chrisler rated it it was ok

This book is best for historians, political junkies, and avid Obama fans--none of which describe me. My criticism against it is the same as many others: it is incredibly dense, including information that I didn't need or care about. I found myself just trying to get through it instead of enjoying it.

With that said, if you're the type who is looking for every piece of information about Obama or the political world he worked in, this book will give it to you and a lot more. I did learn a lot about ...more

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May 05, 2019 Zach rated it liked it

This was a monster of a book, so I’ll try to do it justice with this review.

First of all, when going into a roughly 1500 page book, it’s beneficial to calibrate your expectations. As such, this is my outline of the book for anyone considering starting this book.

1) It is a massive data dump. You are going to get specific details on very mundane aspects of Obama’s life. Wondering what poetry he was reading in 1982? Want to know about the marriage and kids of some minor Chicago union activist of mi ...more

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Jun 11, 2020 Luke Stacks rated it really liked it

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, readin 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.
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Jun 15, 2017 Sam rated it liked it

Shelves: biography, politics

Rising Star is a dense read that fills in a great deal of detail and provides a skeptical take on a career that has often been sugarcoated or treated incompletely. Perhaps the most fascinating chapters are those that cover the best known events in Obama's life. In these, Garrow adds a critical note to many moments and is unwilling to give most actions of the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt. It's valuable to see several points of a presidency that many embrace nostalgically examined Rising Star is a dense read that fills in a great deal of detail and provides a skeptical take on a career that has often been sugarcoated or treated incompletely. Perhaps the most fascinating chapters are those that cover the best known events in Obama's life. In these, Garrow adds a critical note to many moments and is unwilling to give most actions of the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt. It's valuable to see several points of a presidency that many embrace nostalgically examined without any sympathy—compromised, partisan universal healthcare legislation; DoA healthcare.gov; ineffective response to Syria; major losses for Democrats during Obama's two terms; inability to measure up to promises to change tone and bring divided country together; introverted, insular White House leadership.

Sympathy and support seems to be missing from much of this account—perhaps that's valuable in a biography of such a beloved figure, and that is most apparent when talking about well known history. It's very useful to see more of Obama's personality and formative experience exposed. It's at times frustrating to see, especially in dealing briefly with Obama's presidency, Rising Star catalog shortcomings and failures without cataloging a comparable collection of positive attributes or achievements—it's certainly arguable that trying to maintain balance between positive and negative isn't valuable in biographical journalism. This record of failure and personality foible fits the tenor of this biography as a whole, but it leaves one questioning whether the book serves its subject faithfully on the whole. There is a positive side to the Obama presidency, but it's not really to be found here. Rising Star does help explain, for example, why Obama would cash in on the speaking circuit shortly after leaving the Oval Office. A move that deeply frustrated liberal (former) fans who felt such a choice betrayed Obama's one-time rhetoric about changing Washington's culture.

Garrow has an interesting voice and found valuable additional personalities to populate this biography. It's somewhat revealing that Garrow finds little to love in others' biographies of Obama. The degree to which Rising Star finds acclaim will depend on what, how, and how much people are willing to engage with in the story of Barack Obama. ...more

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Jul 13, 2019 Socraticgadfly rated it liked it

Shelves: biography, history, politics-public-policy

Pretty, but not very, good overall ... and yet.

That "and yet" is primarily a compositional issue.

Given that this book was doorstop-sized BUT Garrow had only devoted 100 or so of the pages to Obama's presidency AND an almost literal nothingburger of half a dozen pages to his second term, the solution is obvious, especially if Garrow and even more, his publisher, wanted something in print for 2017 when Obama was leaving the White House.

Take a page from Robert Caro and split this volume into two. O ...more

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Oct 13, 2017 JDR rated it it was ok · review of another edition

If what you hoped was to find was a definitive account of Barack Obama, I really suggest that you look elsewhere. It has nothing to do with the specific substance of the text, it has to do more with how utterly ridiculously detailed it is to a degree that I have seen nowhere else. You may think that what you want is all the little details, the entire rise to power. But that is not true, I beg to differ that what you wanna hear is the first fifty pages lecturing on the Steel Industry of 1980’s So If what you hoped was to find was a definitive account of Barack Obama, I really suggest that you look elsewhere. It has nothing to do with the specific substance of the text, it has to do more with how utterly ridiculously detailed it is to a degree that I have seen nowhere else. You may think that what you want is all the little details, the entire rise to power. But that is not true, I beg to differ that what you wanna hear is the first fifty pages lecturing on the Steel Industry of 1980’s Southeast Chicago. The entire Harvard Law School section is 150 pages long. For some of you, that may be the greatest thing you’ve ever heard and that surprises me because I love reading the big thousand page long books. However, having read succinct and clear prose like Jean Edward Smith or Peter Baker, Garrow’s long winded and neverending tirade of detail upon detail feels less like a narrative of a future president and more of a titanic exposition dump.

Other criticisms note that Garrow may seem a little too harsh or biased towards a president, but my inclination is that he is superbly balanced. By that I am not saying that he expresses no opinion because he definitely does, but rather that the entire biography is not one propaganda piece. Obama is not some sort of saint; he is an individual with a faulty presidency and perhaps an ascension worthy of equal amounts of critical commentary. In fact, there really seems to be a lacking amount of biographies on Obama that are remotely critical; all the marketed novels are left leaning and it is not until you go out of your way that you find something like Ben Shapiro’s take on his presidency.

Maybe what you want to read is this colossal behemoth, but I am also guessing that life is short and life is also far more interesting than this book. No one cares about what happened in Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard in this much detail. But maybe you do and maybe you’ll want to cite it as some kind of evidence. For the collectors, go at it. For the rest, I’d suggest you look somewhere else that is not as dry and long. ...more

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Jul 10, 2017 Gavin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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 ...more

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Sep 04, 2017 Mike rated it liked it

When a movie is more than two hours, I expect every scene to be justified. A similar principle applies to a 1472 page book, and Rising Star fails on that front. I was in full eye-roll mode when it told me the number of parking tickets Obama got as he was finishing up law school. The book is, however, very well researched and cited, and, to the extent that one can get through its sheer length, pretty readable.

It's impossible to write a totally unbiased book-length biography, and I found some segm ...more

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Jun 21, 2017 Heather rated it it was ok

Shelves: biographies, not-as-good-as-i-thought-it-would-b, 2017, dnf-d, did-not-like-at-all, non-fiction

DNF'd after chapter 1. 41 pages that had absolutely nothing to with Barack Obama. My gosh, I've never been so annoyed with a book before. I was so angry at the waste of time that I can't go on. This book has almost 1,500 pages in it when you include the chapter notes, bibliography, acknowledgments, and index., who needs 382 for those.The actual book stops at pg. 1078. You can't even hold this book, it's too heavy and cumbersome. Where's an editor when you need one.
Garrow, lost me from the get ...more

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Nov 20, 2017 Ju Haghverdian rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, audiobooks

[2.5 stars]
This book was quite extensive and very hard to get through. The writing was boring and crowded with details that were quite irrelevant to Obama's life narrative to be honest.

One thing it did to me was to show how Obama was indeed an empty vessel. I mean, I really like Michelle and Barack and how they fought and fight for their girls and fight for girls rights. But when you think about his accomplishments and the little experience and time he took to get there, what did he really accom ...more

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Jun 04, 2017 Pat Lampe rated it liked it

I downloaded this from the library and read and read. When I checked to see how much remained, I was horrified to see there were over 1000 "pages." This book was very interesting and revealing. I don't care for his policies or his demeanor but the book did put to rest some of the rumors I have heard. The man is extremely bright and calculating, prickly, secretive. I'm sure his childhood as a boy whose parents abandoned him has much to do with the man he became. The author worked hard on this boo ...more

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May 11, 2018 Sambasivan rated it it was amazing

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Aug 22, 2018 Donald Trump (Parody) rated it did not like it

Totally nonsense. Believe me I blew through this in a day and can tell you for a fact Barry Hussein knew nothing about rising. He was so old he probably hadn't gotten a rise out of anything in 20 years. Believe me I know a lot about rising. I do it everyday, and I'm doing it as we speak. SKIP! ...more

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Jun 30, 2020 Mustafa Qadri rated it it was amazing

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 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. ...more

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About David J. Garrow

David J. Garrow

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David J. Garrow is Professor of Law & History and Distinguished Faculty Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

Books by David J. Garrow

Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, JR., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Protest at Selma: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Voting Rights Act of 1965

Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe v. Wade

MLK: An American Legacy: Bearing the Cross, Protest at Selma, and The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr.

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“Barack went on to explain that “there was a voice inside me that I could hear that was true—a kernel of myself—this is from a Borges poem—sort of a love poem to a mistress of his,” one that Jorge Luis Borges had written in 1934. “He says ‘I offer you that kernel of myself that is basically untouched, doesn’t traffic in the trivial or the petty or is just there’” (a close rendition of Borges’s declaration, “I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved, somehow—the central heart that deals not in words, traffics not with dreams, and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities”). Barack told Weisberg, “I felt that. That sounds like god to me,” and “to me god is connection . . . making connections, and in that connection, that’s where I find god.” — 1 likes

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