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American history, Barack Obama, biographies, book reviews, David Garrow, presidential biographies, Pulitzer Prize, US Presidents
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
My Journey Through the Best Presidential Biographies 
If I remember correctly, this officially completes your first round of biographies. May I offer my congratulations. And may I also offer my heartfelt thanks for providing a very important resource for me as I buy bios of past presidents and determine which ones I want to read.
I know you have a followup list that may be half as long as your original list. Besides my congrats and my thanks, may I also offer some unsolicited advice- take a break for a couple months. Read some Louis L’Amour or some Harry Potter or some Travis McGee or some C.S. Lewis or some Sue Grafton or some Raymond Chandler or some other kind of escapist or inspirational writing that is completely different from what you’ve been reading for the last 5-6 years. Rest your mind for a while. You surely do deserve it!!!
And thanks again.
Not quite done, but very close! I have just one more bio to go.
And rest assured I’m taking your “slightly-modified” advice 🙂 I’m going to start reading non-presidential biographies as a way of changing the scenery a bit. One of my family members recently sent me the complete Harry Potter series which I’m considering reading in parallel, just as a way of completely shifting gears with at least part of my brain for part of the time.
Thank you for reading this “doorstop” and saving me – and probably many others – the effort. We owe you a debt of gratitude.
All I can say is…what an unfortunate way to spend a 3-day weekend 🙂
PS – Your final line (“.. mind-numbing exercise in patience and pointless perseverance.”) is classic.
Wow, is this the lowest score you’ve ever given a book here? Not that it doesn’t deserve it, Rising Star is a terrible, terrible book.
Your criticism is absolutely spot-on here. Garrow clearly did his research but he doesn’t show any ability to discern the trivial from the important. He spends several pages weighing the evidence whether Obama ever smoked hard drugs, as I recall. And the segments dealing with the ex-girlfriend you mention seem like post facto ax-grinding rather than a truly fresh or insightful perspective (and yet they’re a huge section of the book). The segment where he suggests Obama liked the movie The Unbearable Lightness of Being because the title reminds him of his own racial identity smacks of awful, idiotic sophomore English comp nonsense that shouldn’t have been penned by a serious researcher. The brief segment on his presidency seems snarky and insubstantial, to say the least, like the subject wasn’t worth Garrow’s time but he felt compelled to discuss it. There’s a reason this book is such an unfathomable length, and unfortunately it’s because Garrow seems not to have left anything out.
Garrow’s books on Martin Luther King are quite worthwhile: though Bearing the Cross is similarly dense and detailed (he’s no Taylor Branch), the subject is rich enough to warrant such an approach. This one, and his book on abortion rights (Liberty and Sexuality), are the worst kind of dense, borderline unreadable academic histories.
I often enjoy following up my posts by seeking out other perspectives and I quickly found yours on a popular book review site. Suffice it to say I thought we landed in almost the identical spot (though I recall you being slightly less “generous” than me in your rating).
Still, this turns out to be the lowest score I’ve given a biography (I had to double-check as I recall one past bio being needlessly filled with vitriol and another being a prize-winning bore, but I had scored them both a bit higher.)
At one point early in this book I almost felt as though I was being “punked” and assumed there must be hidden cameras somewhere trying to capture my reaction to reading something this…”uninspiring.” In any event, it did get better for me in the back half or so, but I’m astonished no one at HarperCollins pushed this in a slightly different direction. Because underneath the blizzard of irrelevant factoids there are undoubtedly some valuable intuitions and conclusions to be had.
Unfortunately, this is the only presidential bio in which I was quoted (twice), but I think those quotations only serve to prove your point–they certainly were not necessary or illuminative in any way of understanding President Obama or his presidency.
I found the incredibly detailed portions of the book devoted to President Obama’s years at Harvard Law School to be interesting solely because I was one of his classmates, and I and several other classmates were quoted liberally (small “L”). I have no idea why general readers would care whether or not we liked our 1L Contracts professor. Apparently, they don’t.
Indeed, I think I found you referenced on page 1378! And I distinctly remember reading not only about various classmates of Obama’s…but also (occasionally) where they sat in class(!)
It’s amazing that you were able to read an 1100-page book in three days. I would have gone blind.
I got started on the book earlier in the week but dedicated most of the three day weekend to polishing it off. It will not go down in history as my favorite 72 hour period…
I read ‘Rising Star’ and found it to be a fascinating account of Obama’s formative years up to the point when he announced his candidacy for POTUS. I thought it was well-written and well-paced, and it builds on several themes whereby calculation, compartmentalization, and optics were crucial as Obama transformed himself.
The opening chapter sets the scene by describing how the manufacturing industry on the South Side of Chicago is impacting the community when a steel manufacturer closes its doors. It seems to set a tone for the mood that this area of Chicago was in when Mr. Obama came along as a community organizer with the DCP. As the book moves through his years studying at Occidental College and at universities in New York and Boston, it builds on a theme that Obama was a noticeable ‘rising star’ during these times. One individual interviewed says Obama was “the single most impressive individual I’ve ever seen at HLS”.
The book details Obama’s steady transformation into wanting to be President. Obama’s relationships with people such as Rob Fisher, Greg Galluzzo, and especially Sheila Jager help readers understand how he shaped his identity. Through extensive interviews, Garrow gives the reader a front row seat into their intense relationship with each other. Sheila realized the stimulus for his transformation, and that the resolution of his black identity was linked to his decision to pursue a political career. She saw Barack’s strong desire to become the most powerful individual in the world. To achieve this, Barack knew that he had no career in politics in the long-run, if he married a white woman.
The coverage of Obama’s time in the Senate is also engaging. Obama kept people at an arms-length in terms of socializing, as he wanted to avoid any form of controversy that could come back and bite him later on. Over time, he became detached from his work in the Senate and felt unfulfilled. He did not enjoy fundraising and wanted to be part of shaping larger issues that provide the maximum social benefit for the most people.
The degree of primary research invested is impressive, and I suppose the purpose of this book is to serve as a comprehensive reference on the making of Obama, prior to his presidency. Garrow doesn’t subscribe to the generally accepted view that Obama’s “Dreams From My Father” was accurate. Rather, he notes it as ‘historical fiction’. This is plausible, as one cannot be expected to re-tell their own personal history if they are simultaneously selling themselves as a commodity.
For most people, the 2004 Democratic Convention in Boston was their first glimpse into Barack Obama, and was clearly a ‘springboard’ for his rise. When thinking back to that time period, I recall wondering why was there such an acceptance of someone as a candidate for President that so many people knew so little about? People were (and still are) just fascinated with the man. Many felt he would lead change the face of politics. It seems that few journalists took the time to objectively analyze Obama’s background and find out who he really was and how he formed his beliefs. For this reason, I believe there are many valuable aspects to ‘Rising Star’.
Although the epilogue of the book is brief and doesn’t seem to gel with the main body of the book in terms of pace and coverage. I came away from it with the view that Barack Obama was a fundamentally different person than who he was during his pre-presidential years. Aside from that, I found it be extremely well-written and I came away from it knowing so much more about Obama’s transformation as a person, as well as why and he decided to run for President.
I, like Chris, found this to be a fascinating read about Obama, from his childhood in Hawaii to the best colleges in the USA. Especially interesting was discovering David Axelrod is the one responsible for the rise of Obama from a community organizer to becoming the President. Probably a shock to Michelle to read that Obama was told he would not receive the Black vote for Senator if he didn’t have a Black girlfriend or wife instead of a White one. Overall, an interesting and enlightening book.