Rising Star, David Garrow
Rising Star, David Garrow
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Rising Star
The Making of Barack Obama

Bestseller

Author: David Garrow

Narrator: Charles Constant

Unabridged: 56 hr 9 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 05/09/2017


Synopsis

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERRising 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 CrossBarack 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.

About David Garrow

David J. Garrow is Professor of Law & History and Distinguished Faculty Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. He is the author of four books, including Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography. He is a regular contributor to the Washington Post, New York Times, and The American Prospect. He lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Chris on June 22, 2017

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 thos......more

Goodreads review by Ron on July 28, 2017

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 al......more

Goodreads review by Joshua on September 16, 2017

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 provi......more

Goodreads review by Steve on February 11, 2019

[URL not allowed] 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......more

Goodreads review by Stetson on October 03, 2024

David Garrow's gigantic biography of Barack Obama's life prior to the presidency is remarkably detailed and generally even-handed. The tome is certainly dull in some places, recording minutiae like the Obama household finances, but it is otherwise one of the closest and most honest looks at one of t......more