It’s pretty safe to say that by the end of his 8 long years in office, most of America had already figured out that Barack Obama is a self-serving, and calculating narcissist. But this new book, “Rising Star” shines a light on a few more details in the shallow, self-absorbed life of a man who the author calls “hollow at its core.”
The sex secrets of the young Barack Obama have been revealed in an authoritative new biography of the ex-president.
The new book by Pulitzer Prize winning author David J. Garrow titled, “Rising” claims that Barack Obama proposed to Sheila Miyoshi Jager before he met Michelle
Garrows book is full of bombshells about Barack Obama and the sacrifices he made early on
In a probing new biography, “Rising Star,” David J. Garrow attempts to do all that, but also something more: He tells us how Obama lived, and explores the calculations he made in the decades leading up to his winning the presidency. Garrow portrays Obama as a man who ruthlessly compartmentalized his existence; who believed early on that he was fated for greatness; and who made emotional sacrifices in the pursuit of a goal that must have seemed unlikely to everyone but him. Every step — whether his foray into community organizing, Harvard Law School, even the choice of whom to love — was not just about living a life but about fulfilling a destiny.
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. Narrow, who received a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Martin Luther King Jr., concludes this massive new work with a damning verdict on Obama’s determination: “While the crucible of self-creation had produced an ironclad will, the vessel was hollow at its core.” -The Washington Post
Obama slept with his girlfriend Genevieve Cook on their first date, before she wrote him a poem about their ‘f***ing’ and called their sex ‘passionate’, the book about the former president reveals.
They also took cocaine together – and after they split she slept with his best friend.
Obama also considered a gay relationship while at college, twice proposed to another white girlfriend, and cheated on Michelle with his ex during the first year of their relationship.
Obama, a new Columbia graduate who was working for a firm that prepared financial reports at the time, made dinner for Cook at his apartment in Manhattan two weeks after meeting her at a New Year’s Eve party and handing her his phone number.
It was the start of a relationship which is one of a series revealed in Rising Star.
It was written after exhaustive research by Pulitzer-prize winning biographer David Garrow, and also reveals how he asked another woman to marry him – and continued a relationship with her while dating Michelle, before she became his wife.
Cook was 25 when she met 22-year-old Obama on New Year’s Eve in 1983.
Australian-born Cook was living in her mother and stepfather’s Park Avenue apartment at the time, but had been brought up around the world, including – like Obama, Indonesia – as her father was an Australian spy and diplomat.
But the couple also used drugs and Cook reveals that Obama was still a cocaine user when they were together.
He would spend time with other friends – Hasan Chandoo, Imad Hussain and Sohale Siddiqi, who he had been friends with at Occidental College, in Los Angeles – and Cook said the trio was taking ‘lots of cocaine’.
They were far more prolific users than Obama, who she said probably preferred staying home to read than taking the drug. Chandoo – who was later to become a fundraiser for Obama – was the leader, the book claims.
‘For every five lines that somebody did, he would have done half,’ Cook said.
The book also notes that Cook and Obama would smoke pot but only at parties and records one time when during tension in their relationship she wrote in her diary that they went to a party and got ‘high’ on cocaine.
That Obama was still using cocaine in his early 20s is a significant revelation.
He had previously only disclosed that he used it as a teenage student.
The couple split in June 1985, after a year and a half together, the book says.
But she was hardly out of his life – because she became involved with his friend Sohale in September of that year.
She and Sohale did ecstasy together, and then had sex. When she wrote to Obama and told him he replied: ‘The news of Sohale and you did hurt.’
He also used – possibly inadvertently – a racial slur to refer to Sohale and the other two Pakistani-born friends, calling them ‘the Pakis’ in the same letter.
