Remember the controversy around ‘The Red Sari’ by Javier Moro and ‘The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh’ by Sanjaya Baru? History repeats itself for the newly released book ‘Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama’ penned by Pulitzer Prize winning author David J. Garrow.
“Moving around the globe, from Hawaii to Indonesia to the American Northeast and Midwest, Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama 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 reveals as never before the ambition, the dreams, and the all-too-human struggles of an iconic president in a sure to be news-making biography that will stand as the most authoritative account of Obama’s pre-presidential life for decades to come,” highlights the synopsis of the 1460-paged book.
This nine-year long researched tale have stirred major controversy around Obama’s life before he was elected as the President of United States. Interesting and contrasting reviews and comments flooded social media late last week.
‘It is in the personal realm that Garrow’s account is particularly revealing. He shares for the first time the story of a woman Obama lived with and loved in Chicago, in the years before he met Michelle, and whom he asked to marry him. Sheila Miyoshi Jager, now a professor at Oberlin College, is a recurring presence in “Rising Star,” and her pained, drawn-out relationship with Obama informs both his will to rise in politics and the trade-offs he deems necessary to do so,’ marks the Washington Post review.
However, Kakutani of New York Times dismissed the tale as “a dreary slog of a read: a bloated, tedious and — given its highly intemperate epilogue — ill-considered book that is in desperate need of editing, and way more exhausting than exhaustive.”
“Barack Obama: The Story” by David Maraniss, “Reading Obama” by James T. Kloppenberg and “The Bridge” by David Remnick were the other three prominent biographies written by journalists and writers between 2009 and 2017, the term served by Obama as the 44th President of United States.
While the other writers have been silent till now, David Maraniss, tweet-reacted “David Garrow, author of new Obama bio, was vile, undercutting, ignoble competitor unlike any I’ve encountered.”
Inevitably, books discussing lives of eminent political personalities has been proven bestsellers. This book seems to be no different post its availability to readers from 9th May 2017. Let’s see what the readers have to say and number of copies William Morrow has to print.
