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socraticgadfly's review against another edition
3.0
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. Or even three.
If it's two volumes, the presidency is the second. If you're going three, the Senate is No. 2 and presidency the third. Or, if you truly ARE Bob Caro, a volume for each term.
Seriously, that's needed. The book is fantastic up to Obama's Senate election. It's pretty to very good on his Senate years. But sorry, David, it's run of the mill on his presidency.
Let's say you do three volumes. That's 650 for volume 1, if you break it at the moment Obama announces his candidacy. His campaign, plus his actual Senate time fleshed out 50 or more pages than in the actual book gives you 400 for volume 2. Do an actual 200 pages on each term and that's 400 for volume 3. Publication sked is easy: 2017 still for volume 1, 2019 volume 2 and 2021 volume 3. This also lets you get, oh, 50-75 pages of post presidential life in volume 3 if you want, for 475.
Or, two volumes. That gives you your 800-850 in volume 1. You still puff out everything else like above, only maybe less on post presidential life. And you have around 800-850 in volume 2. Pub date still 2017 on 1 and 2019 or 2020, maybe better, on 2.
And, by breaking your first volume at least before Obama's presidency, if not before his Senate time, you avoid burning sources who primarily knew him from his Washington years.
Unless Garrow was totally not wedded to the idea, his publisher surely would have been.
And, the Christian Science Monitor review shows what Garrow missed by not going post-presidential, at least in brief, in a second or third volume. https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2017/0525/Rising-Star-offers-a-severe-but-insightful-assessment-of-Barack-Obama
==
That said, the actual book at hand, with its lost one star.
The Sheila Jager issue was important not for sex itself, contra blow-up reviews that focused on that, but the larger relationship issues and Obama’s already engaging in calculated decision making on them. As he later did with comments about grandparents.
He evolved or devolved on legislative stances. Take your pick, but Garrow documents it well. Early on in the Illinois Senate, he favored gay marriage, not just civil unions. Also supported a constitutional amendment for the state to guarantee insurance coverage, as in a state-level single payer or in that direction, and NOT an Obamacare. Said this as late as 2002.
Only an occasional visitor to Wright’s church by 2002.
Lots of money worries. Yes. He and Michelle both had student loans still to pay, and child care costs. But, before his Senate run, between state senate and law prof alone he’s raking $100K a year. She? $60K. Then he gets consulting. She gets a new job. By his Senate run, they're raking $240K a year together. Chicago ain't cheap, but it ain't either coast, either. But Michelle wanted more money.
Bruce Dixon and Adolph Reed are both among early black callouts against Obama over not stepping aside to let Alice Palmer run for state senate unopposed. But Reed, Garrow notes, was part of the problem, giving her no help with her sloppy petition drive. I find that interesting, but not surprising, given my own indirect tangles with Reed.
Obama was a flipper on criticizing then embracing Brazil’s just elected Lula in 2003.
Garrow doesn't fully pick up class issues, though he does hint at them. Remember, Punahou is a non-cheap private day school Current tuition for a year of high school is $12K. Yes, Obama had need based help, but you still have to be accepted first. Oxy ain't cheap at $55K a year right now. Nor is Columbia.
And Obama passed up full ride to Northwestern to do Harvard Law instead.
Garrow could have delved into some of this even more.
Garrow indirectly answers whether Obama is consciously aware of, and consciously adapting, compartmentalization. That answer is yes.
Notes that Chicago friends said Michelle had gone more Hollywood in DC than him.
Claims that Maraniss work was seen as lightweight at release. Seems half true, but tawdry to say so.
===
But other things drop this another star.
First, in all of his thoroughness, or alleged thoroughness, Garrow misses some things.
A biggie would be Vernon Jordan taking Obama before a dog and pony show of banksters in 2003, before he was even elected to the Senate, and getting their thumbs up. In short, Obama was even more of a political player, even earlier in national political life, than Garrow portrays.
And, as for his rush job on Obama's presidential years?
If, per some Amazon reviewers (I just grokked the center sections of the book, having read Mendell and Remnick) some of the presidential decisions for which Garrow attacks Obama include his NOT bombing Syria, well, Garrow and his editorializing can go fück themselves. At that point, his version of liberalism is warmongering. Also, re the book itself, at that point, we've left biography and officially jumped into public policy, and I understand now why he didn't take a page out of Caro: That wasn't his goal.
I must also question his judgment otherwise. Rather than Obama not being bipartisan enough, as Garrow claims in the epilogue, the problem is entirely opposite: President Kumbaya compromised away the compromise in advance on many issues in search of compromise, and when he didn't do it himself, Biden did it as his emissary.
That said, if it was his goal to see the "Rising Star" get to the presidential starting line? Fine. End the book with Obama's first visit to Iowa in 2006 and don't add the editorializing epilogue.
This interview with Garrow: https://longreads.com/2017/05/09/the-real-obama-an-interview-with-pulitzer-prize-winning-biographer-david-j-garrow/
Only deepens the mystery of his take on Obama's presidential years. If Obama really was that calculating in reinventing himself (and I certainly believe he was) why would he, with that calculation and his cocky confidence, be disappointed in any way?
The more likely answer is that Garrow is engaging in psychological projection.
And, the same bad attitude toward other biographers that's in the end of the book shows up in the interview.
Garrow's recent story for an alt-right British magazine about some new findings about Martin Luther King's FBI files don't help his gloryhound reputation, either. On that, he could have dropped a "marker" on social media accounts, or with a reporter from a major newspaper or newsmag, to give himself "priority" in case a wingnut spin job came out, and only then, do an actual story.
Also, as a newspaper editor (and from the way Garrow speaks, I know the general pattern is the same in biography writing) I find it unconscionable that the author of anything other than an "authorized" biography would let its subject read the entire manuscript.
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. Or even three.
If it's two volumes, the presidency is the second. If you're going three, the Senate is No. 2 and presidency the third. Or, if you truly ARE Bob Caro, a volume for each term.
Seriously, that's needed. The book is fantastic up to Obama's Senate election. It's pretty to very good on his Senate years. But sorry, David, it's run of the mill on his presidency.
Let's say you do three volumes. That's 650 for volume 1, if you break it at the moment Obama announces his candidacy. His campaign, plus his actual Senate time fleshed out 50 or more pages than in the actual book gives you 400 for volume 2. Do an actual 200 pages on each term and that's 400 for volume 3. Publication sked is easy: 2017 still for volume 1, 2019 volume 2 and 2021 volume 3. This also lets you get, oh, 50-75 pages of post presidential life in volume 3 if you want, for 475.
Or, two volumes. That gives you your 800-850 in volume 1. You still puff out everything else like above, only maybe less on post presidential life. And you have around 800-850 in volume 2. Pub date still 2017 on 1 and 2019 or 2020, maybe better, on 2.
And, by breaking your first volume at least before Obama's presidency, if not before his Senate time, you avoid burning sources who primarily knew him from his Washington years.
Unless Garrow was totally not wedded to the idea, his publisher surely would have been.
And, the Christian Science Monitor review shows what Garrow missed by not going post-presidential, at least in brief, in a second or third volume. https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2017/0525/Rising-Star-offers-a-severe-but-insightful-assessment-of-Barack-Obama
==
That said, the actual book at hand, with its lost one star.
The Sheila Jager issue was important not for sex itself, contra blow-up reviews that focused on that, but the larger relationship issues and Obama’s already engaging in calculated decision making on them. As he later did with comments about grandparents.
He evolved or devolved on legislative stances. Take your pick, but Garrow documents it well. Early on in the Illinois Senate, he favored gay marriage, not just civil unions. Also supported a constitutional amendment for the state to guarantee insurance coverage, as in a state-level single payer or in that direction, and NOT an Obamacare. Said this as late as 2002.
Only an occasional visitor to Wright’s church by 2002.
Lots of money worries. Yes. He and Michelle both had student loans still to pay, and child care costs. But, before his Senate run, between state senate and law prof alone he’s raking $100K a year. She? $60K. Then he gets consulting. She gets a new job. By his Senate run, they're raking $240K a year together. Chicago ain't cheap, but it ain't either coast, either. But Michelle wanted more money.
Bruce Dixon and Adolph Reed are both among early black callouts against Obama over not stepping aside to let Alice Palmer run for state senate unopposed. But Reed, Garrow notes, was part of the problem, giving her no help with her sloppy petition drive. I find that interesting, but not surprising, given my own indirect tangles with Reed.
Obama was a flipper on criticizing then embracing Brazil’s just elected Lula in 2003.
Garrow doesn't fully pick up class issues, though he does hint at them. Remember, Punahou is a non-cheap private day school Current tuition for a year of high school is $12K. Yes, Obama had need based help, but you still have to be accepted first. Oxy ain't cheap at $55K a year right now. Nor is Columbia.
And Obama passed up full ride to Northwestern to do Harvard Law instead.
Garrow could have delved into some of this even more.
Garrow indirectly answers whether Obama is consciously aware of, and consciously adapting, compartmentalization. That answer is yes.
Notes that Chicago friends said Michelle had gone more Hollywood in DC than him.
Claims that Maraniss work was seen as lightweight at release. Seems half true, but tawdry to say so.
===
But other things drop this another star.
First, in all of his thoroughness, or alleged thoroughness, Garrow misses some things.
A biggie would be Vernon Jordan taking Obama before a dog and pony show of banksters in 2003, before he was even elected to the Senate, and getting their thumbs up. In short, Obama was even more of a political player, even earlier in national political life, than Garrow portrays.
And, as for his rush job on Obama's presidential years?
If, per some Amazon reviewers (I just grokked the center sections of the book, having read Mendell and Remnick) some of the presidential decisions for which Garrow attacks Obama include his NOT bombing Syria, well, Garrow and his editorializing can go fück themselves. At that point, his version of liberalism is warmongering. Also, re the book itself, at that point, we've left biography and officially jumped into public policy, and I understand now why he didn't take a page out of Caro: That wasn't his goal.
I must also question his judgment otherwise. Rather than Obama not being bipartisan enough, as Garrow claims in the epilogue, the problem is entirely opposite: President Kumbaya compromised away the compromise in advance on many issues in search of compromise, and when he didn't do it himself, Biden did it as his emissary.
That said, if it was his goal to see the "Rising Star" get to the presidential starting line? Fine. End the book with Obama's first visit to Iowa in 2006 and don't add the editorializing epilogue.
This interview with Garrow: https://longreads.com/2017/05/09/the-real-obama-an-interview-with-pulitzer-prize-winning-biographer-david-j-garrow/
Only deepens the mystery of his take on Obama's presidential years. If Obama really was that calculating in reinventing himself (and I certainly believe he was) why would he, with that calculation and his cocky confidence, be disappointed in any way?
The more likely answer is that Garrow is engaging in psychological projection.
And, the same bad attitude toward other biographers that's in the end of the book shows up in the interview.
Garrow's recent story for an alt-right British magazine about some new findings about Martin Luther King's FBI files don't help his gloryhound reputation, either. On that, he could have dropped a "marker" on social media accounts, or with a reporter from a major newspaper or newsmag, to give himself "priority" in case a wingnut spin job came out, and only then, do an actual story.
Also, as a newspaper editor (and from the way Garrow speaks, I know the general pattern is the same in biography writing) I find it unconscionable that the author of anything other than an "authorized" biography would let its subject read the entire manuscript.
mistylloyd's review
2.0
I honestly quit this book @ about 75% through - which is not a thing I ususally ever let myself do - but the author was insufferable. When I was a couple hundred pages in, and not really feeling it, I let myself browse through some reviews and I noticed multiple statements that they weren't walking away from this book with any knowledge they didn't have to begin with, and now that I am so far in, I understand where they were coming from.
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