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Barack Obama:

The Story
Front Cover
49 Reviews
Simon & Schuster, Jun 19, 2012 - Biography & Autobiography - 641 pages
From one of our preeminent journalists and modern historians comes the epic story of Barack Obama and the world that created him.

In Barack Obama: The Story, David Maraniss has written a deeply reported generational biography teeming with fresh insights and revealing information, a masterly narrative drawn from hundreds of interviews, including with President Obama in the Oval Office, and a trove of letters, journals, diaries, and other documents.

The book unfolds in the small towns of Kansas and the remote villages of western Kenya, following the personal struggles of Obama’s white and black ancestors through the swirl of the twentieth century. It is a roots story on a global scale, a saga of constant movement, frustration and accomplishment, strong women and weak men, hopes lost and deferred, people leaving and being left. Disparate family threads converge in the climactic chapters as Obama reaches adulthood and travels from Honolulu to Los Angeles to New York to Chicago, trying to make sense of his past, establish his own identity, and prepare for his political future.

Barack Obama: The Story chronicles as never before the forces that shaped the first black president of the United States and explains why he thinks and acts as he does. Much like the author’s classic study of Bill Clinton, First in His Class, this promises to become a seminal book that will redefine a president.

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Well written and researched. - Goodreads
Very smooth, engaging writing. - Goodreads
In 641 pages of prose. - Goodreads
The author's research is amazing. - Goodreads
The book is well-researched and documented. - Goodreads
This author did his research. - Goodreads

Review: Barack Obama: The Story

User Review  - Jordan Cederdahl - Goodreads

This book is completely fascinating, and at the same time, it is possibly too detailed. If it is possible for a book to be considered too in depth, this is the book. Barry Obama doesn't appear until ... Read full review

Review: Barack Obama: The Story

User Review  - Jean Ecklund - Goodreads

Excellent. More a story of his family background which is interesting stuff. All those people we thought were muslims turned out to be Seventh Day Adventists. Read full review

All 48 reviews »

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About the author (2012)

David Maraniss, an associate editor atThe Washington Post, is the author of critically acclaimed best-selling books on Bill Clinton, Vince Lombardi, Vietnam and the sixties, Roberto Clemente, and the 1960 Rome Olympics. He won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Clinton, was part of aPostteam that won the 2007 Pulitzer for coverage of the Virginia Tech tragedy, and has been a Pulitzer finalist three other times, including in the nonfiction history category forThey Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967. Maraniss is a fellow of the Society of American Historians and a member of Biographers International Organization. He lives in Washington, D.C. and Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife, Linda. They have two grown children and three granddaughters.

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