"Rising Star": Author of New Book Discusses Obama's Road to the Presidency

image
Kaia Los HuertosKaia Los Huertos
Published: 23 May, 2017
1 min read

IVN's A Civil Assessment host T.J. O’Hara interviews David Garrow on his new book, Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama, released this month.

David discusses Obama before his political career took off, and the choices he made that led to the ex-president we see today. Regarding the book, host T.J. O'Hara says, “It was almost like you couldn’t recognize the early Barack Obama when you compared and contrasted him to the presidential Barack Obama.”

David is a professor of Law & History and Distinguished Faculty Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Prior to moving to Pittsburgh, He was Senior Research Fellow at Homerton College, University of Cambridge. David is the author of a number of biographies and historical books, including, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, for which he won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in Biography.

David regularly contributes to the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the American Prospect, and more. His academic writings have been published in the Supreme Court Review, the Yale Law Journal, the University of Chicago Law Review, Cornell Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, and Constitutional Commentary. He has taught at Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the City University of New York, The Cooper Union, the College of William and Mary, American University, and Emory University.

David was born in Massachusetts in 1953, graduated magna cum laude from Wesleyan University in 1975, and received his Ph.D. from Duke University in 1981. In 2003, he married Virginia Darleen Opfer, now Director of RAND Education and Distinguished Chair in Education Policy.

You Might Also Like

Proposition 50 voter guide
California Prop 50: Partisan Power Play or Necessary Counterpunch?
November 4 marks a special election for what has become the most controversial ballot measure in California in recent memory: Proposition 50, which would circumvent congressional districts drawn by the state’s independent redistricting commission for a legislative-drawn map....
01 Oct, 2025
-
9 min read
court gavel.
Virtual Discussion: The Fight for Equal Independent Voting Rights Makes it to SCOTUS
Every major voting rights movement in U.S. history – whether successful or not – has intertwined with landmark litigation. This was the case for women’s suffrage. It was the case for civil rights. And it is the case in the ongoing effort to protect the right of all voters to have equal participation in taxpayer-funded elections – something millions of independent voters are denied across the U.S....
29 Sep, 2025
-
2 min read
Supreme Court building
SCOTUS Considers Challenge to Closed Primaries -- Here's Why It Is Such a Big Deal
In a dramatic step forward for litigation challenging closed primaries, the U.S. Supreme Court has indicated they are going to conference to discuss whether to grant a writ of certiorari to Polelle v. Florida Secretary of State; a case challenging Florida's closed primaries that Open Primaries has supported since its inception....
26 Sep, 2025
-
2 min read