forward. but has the advantage of looking at that history and making calculations about where realism lies? >> i think that that's part of the process with obama. his mother was an idealist. his grandmother was a pragmatist. so he had both of those elements to him from the beginning. but, also, as he started to understand power, he became even more pragmatic. when he was a community organizer in chicago, he saw the limits of what he could do as an organizer and started to understand for the first time how to really exert power and that he had to go into politics. so my bookends right when he's driving up to harvard, realizing what he has to do to get where he is today. >> this is the early life. this takes us up to harvard law school. and one of the things that is fascinating about it, i think, for a lot of readers is you're watching this character who has some very exotic and, one would think, possibly conflicting background elements. >> oh, absolutely. >> we can understand that. beginning with being biracial,