Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama

Written by David J. Garrow

Narrated by Charles Constant

The definitive account of Barack Obama’s life before he became the 44th president of the United States – the formative years, confluence of forces, and influential figures who helped shaped an extraordinary leader and his rise – from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Bearing the Cross.

‘Impressive … deeply reported’ New York Times Book Review

‘Engages, absorbs and mesmerises’ Library Journal

Barack Obama's keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention instantly catapulted the little-known state senator from Illinois into the national spotlight. Three months later, Obama would win election to the U.S. Senate; four years after that he would make history as America’s first black president.

Moving around the globe, from Hawaii to Indonesia to the American Northeast and Midwest, Rising Star meticulously unpacks Obama’s life, from his tumultuous upbringing in Honolulu and Jakarta, to his formative time as a community organizer on Chicago’s South Side, working in some of the roughest neighborhoods, to Cambridge, where he excelled at Harvard Law School, and finally back to Chicago, where he pursued his political destiny.

In voluminous detail, drawn from more than 1,000 interviews and encyclopedic documentary research, Garrow delivers the most authoritative account of the ambition, the dreams and the all-too-human struggles of an iconic president.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Release date: May 9, 2017
• ISBN: 9780008229399

David J. Garrow

David J. Garrow is a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian who is presently professor of law and history and Distinguished Faculty Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Garrow, who earned his PhD from Duke University, is an acclaimed scholar of the United States’ black freedom struggle and reproductive rights movement, as well as of the US Supreme Court. His definitive biography of Martin Luther King Jr., Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was honored with the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for biography and the seventh-annual Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. Garrow’s other books are Protest at Selma: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr.: From “Solo” to Memphis, and Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe v. Wade. He also served as a senior adviser to Eyes on the Prize, the award-winning PBS documentary series on the civil rights movement.

Reviews for Rising Star

[nicholasjjordan · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I do admit I would not have finished if it wasn’t an audiobook (62 hours of audiobook!), but I’m so glad I listened to it. More focus and attention to detail than virtually anyone wants, this is still an astoundingly great biography. I highly recommend it if you want to understand Illinois and Chicago politics, the self-making of Barack Obama, and some of the facts that were mired in hype and headlines as they happened.

I’d love to see a second volume really unpacking the years once inside Senate and White House, as those are basically all epilogue in this book. I think part of that might have been the very carefully manicured image that Obama had once he reached those high offices (Jeremiah Wright and Tony Rezko notwithstanding).

[calabrom2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I read an excerpt of this biography to my class before we start Obama's back to school speech during one of our units. I think this book gives insight on Obama and his beliefs.