Before i ask a question, i want to show you a video. I mustve had six or seven biographies written about me. Exciting upnot that until i was president. Have these amazing experiences. I did not really accomplish all that much when i was in high school or in college. Folks think around and they are looking for stuff. Then they try to dramatize things that are kind of routine. There is a part of you that says why would you care about this, it is not that interesting. How right is he. Once you choose to run for president of the United States and succeed, your biography is a major part of american history. Had a mucha actually more interesting, much more richly varied earlier life then we have really to a large extent known up until now. People are aware he grew up in hawaii. But the really transformative period of baracks life in his mid20s came when he was living in chicago for the first time, 1985 to 1988, working as a Community Organizer on the far south side, his first immersion in an African American community is distinct from his, sort of, multiethnic international earlier life and also living in a very intense private relationship with a young woman in hyde park. And its during those years that really he comes to define himself both as a black man and as someone who aspires to a political career and is aiming for the presidency. Before we talk more about him and were going to talk a lot about him, where did you start in all this where did you grow up and where did you go to school . I grew up all along the east coast, outside of boston, outside of washington here, outside of new york city. Went to Wesleyan University in connecticut as an undergraduate. Then went south to Duke University for graduate school. My first book on the Voting Rights act of 1965 had begun as my undergraduate thesis. Was published by Yale University press when i was in grad school. My second book on the fbis pursuit of dr. King came out in 1981. Got a fair amount of attention. And that was the lead up to my big biography of dr. King, bearing the cross, that won a pulitzer in 1987. Why did it win a pulitzer . 1987. I said why . I think one way i would answer that is that the Pulitzer Board at that time had a number of people on it who were former civil rights journalists. Claude sitton being one. New york times, yes. So they were familiar with civil rights historiography, and if i can say so, what a significant step forward that book represented compared to earlier work. Back in 1986, civil rights historiography was just starting to gain strength. Its a whole lot more active a field now than it was when i started interviewing people in 1979. What did you have in the book that no one knew before it came out . I think with dr. King, the fundamental piece of this was how deep his faith grounding was. This was someone who had a selfsacrificial understanding of his calling. The number one thing for people to appreciate about dr. King is that he did not want to be a famous person, a celebrity. He felt drafted that this was a role that he was being asked to unwillingly take. And the great, great irony of all the fbi electronic surveillance of dr. King that was preserved and that i received under the freedom of information act is that you see in those wiretapped transcripts what a phenomenally humble and selfcritical person Martin Luther king jr. Was. A tremendously impressive person and more impressive thanks to j. Edgar hoover. How long did you work on that book . That book was a good seven years for me. Why did it take so long . At that time i was teaching almost fulltime. Where . First at the university of North Carolina at chapel hill, then at City University of new york. The technology of the 1980s meant that one was spending more time in front of the microfilm machine rather than accessing old publications digitally on the web. Brian lamb where else have you taught and where are you teaching now . Im presently a professor of law and history at the university of pittsburgh law school. Before we moved to pittsburgh, we were in cambridge, england for six years at the university of cambridge. A wonderful place. So ive had the privilege of being able to live in britain as well. I know you say in your book that you spent eight hours with Barrack Obama off the record. What can you tell us about those eight hours . Where did it happen . And what did you see up close . And when did it start that you talked, started talking to him . My first visit to see barack in person was april of 2016, probably an hour and 20 minutes or so in the oval office. After that, i offered to let him read the manuscript, typescript manuscript of the whole first 10 chapters of this book. And he did that over the course of the late summer last year. I then went back for threeplus hours on two different sundays last fall in october of 2016 and then i believe december 4th, 2016 after the election. And barack sat there with the markedup typescript and we, sort of, went through it chapter by chapter. So should i assume that he did not read the epilogue . Correct. And why did you not show him the epilogue . The epilogue was still being composed and edited down during the fall. You say that i dont have the exact quote in your book that he disagreed with what some of what he read about your book. What were the kind of things that he disagreed with, can you tell us . I think what i can say without violating these washington ground rules, which are ground rules that dont match up pretty well with academic history is that once someone has written their own account of how they remember their life, that when theyre presented with other witnesses, multiple, multiple witnesses whose memories significantly differ, someone whos already written their version remains very firmly attached to their version. So why did he want it off the record . We did not record it. Im not sure i could guess beyond that. What did you learn though, by being able to sit across from him and talk about it . I think he is very deeply attached to the version of his life that he put forward in dreams from my father. Now, thats a book that stops in 1988, when hes leaving chicago before he goes to law school. My book, only the first four chapters overlap with dreams from my father because i go all the way through harvard through all his years in illinois politics and his Senate Campaign u. S. Senate campaign in 2004. So, we spent a disproportionate amount of our time together focused on those years from his early life, his parents up through 1988. Why did he see you in the first place . How did you get an introduction . And why did he say yes . My conduit to the president whom i was first introduced to has been bob bauer former white House Counsel who has been Barack Obamas personal attorney since the beginning of the president ial campaign back in 2007 coming forward. So, mr. Bauer is someone with whom i interacted very regularly starting in the summer of 2013. His wife is anita dunn . Exactly. And thats exactly how this came to pass, because anita dunn was one of the two primary figures running the 2004 Senate Campaign of one of baracks democratic opponents in illinois, blair hull. And i had gone to see ms. Dunn to talk with her about the Hull Campaign not really appreciating that her husband was one of the people closest to president obama. Have you talked to either bob bauer or anita dunn about this book since its come out . No. I received my first copy of the book on a saturday and we had arranged for two copies to be delivered to bob bauer, i believe on that following tuesday, so that he could pass those two finished books along to president obama and president obamas press shop. Again, that was just my sense of what good manners are even when you still have remaining disagreements. Im going to make an attempt and hold it up so the camera can see how big this book is. I dont think in the 20 years this program has been on the air that weve come even close to a book this size. Why did you want a 1,500page book or almost better, why would a publisher want a 1,500page book selling for 45 retail . My very purposeful intent with this book has been to produce a book of record that folks will still be using and relying upon 25, 35 years from now. I began reading about barack in early 2008 when he won the Iowa Caucuses and sort of burst on to the political scene as a serious president ial contender. And all throughout 2008, i was disappointed by the quality and the depth of journalism about his earlier life. I thought that the Mainstream Media was simply being insufficiently curious about him. And on the other hand, we simultaneously had all of these wacky oppositional actions out there regarding where was he born, was he really muslim . And so, i came to this really with a professional belief that someone of my background and experience should really tackle this and it ended up being nine full years, and do the best most thorough job i could as an experienced scholarly historian. And now nine years later its over 1,000 interviews. And thats counting people one by one, no one counts four times just because i spoke to them four times. You say in the book that you interviewed yourself, not through a researcher, every one of the thousand people. Yes. How did you do that . And how much of it was recorded and what did you do with the recordings if you have any . Sure. Almost all of it is recorded. Its probably about 50 percent in person, 50 percent by phone. I probably have spoken with 140 or so people who were at Harvard Law School with barack from 1988 to 1991, and probably a 110 or so of his former law students at the university of chicago. Barack taught law classes at the u of c law school for a decade. Its a very important part of his life that people dont appreciate. So, a lot of the harvard classmates and u of c students i spoke to by phone, but with virtually all of the really serious major characters in the book, i tried to go and see people in person because you simply have a much richer interaction with people when you meet them facetoface. And maybe most importantly of all, when you make the effort to go see people in person, they make the effort to pull out old letters and documents that theyve hung onto. One of the great strengths of this book stems from the fact that all throughout the 1980s, barack obama was quite a letter writer. And there are many people who have, still have long handwritten letters from barack. In addition, barack and his best friend during law school rob fisher coauthored a 240, 250page unpublished book manuscript that rob and his mother held onto. And its a fascinating document. Half of it is about race and racial policy, and the stance that barack and rob taken that manuscript about civil rights process and civil rights policy is a very significant window looking forward into baracks political life. How would you describe your own politics . Im a pro forma Bernie Sanders donor. In years past, when Michael Harrington was still alive, i was a very active member of democratic socialists of america. In the context of chicago politics, but i realized not everyone will know the names, i made up somewhat more serious contribution jesus chuy garcia, a progressive challenger to mayor rahm emanuel. Did you vote either time for barack obama . Yes. Both times. I was england the first time, still living in england. Rob fisher, i know that ive heard you say this out loud is an important part of this book. Tell us more about who he is. And by the way, is he white or African American . Rob is white. Hes originally from southern maryland, tobacco farm country. Rob is a little bit older than barack. Had a phd in economics from duke. Had taught economics at Holy Cross College in worcester, massachusetts before starting law school at the exact same time as barack. They meet on like day one at harvard. And scores and scores of their classmates whom ive spoken to without exception described barack and rob as the two brightest people in that Harvard Law School class of 1991. They had an amazingly intense intellectual friendship across those three years, taking almost all of their courses together, in the third year, writing this long book manuscript together as part of a seminar paper process for something taught by professor martha minow, later dean of Harvard Law School. Thats newton minows daughter . Exactly, exactly, brian. And then when barack starts working on the manuscript that became dreams from my father in 1995, it was rob who was baracks primary sort of editorial helper, critic in reading and marking up that manuscript. By the way, you have 270 pages of source notes in the back, tiny little type. Yes. Did you get help doing that . Myself. I did all that myself. No, i had two wonderful young women, alex lerner, now a princeton history phd. Alison lefkovitz, a young history professor at rutgersnewark. They did a lot of my newspapers on microfilm and library work form me in chicago back the first two years of this book. But in terms of all of the notes taking and speaking with people and putting together footnotes, thats all 100 percent dave garrow. Want to run to you a clip of another historian who is an outsider looking in. It looks like youre somewhat quarreling with this gentleman as way to set it up so you can talk about the women in Barack Obamas life. Here is David Maraniss on his book, barack obama. In president obamas memoir dreams from my father, theres a very provocative a couple of pages where he says, i was involved with a girl in new york and she was white. And from the moment that he sort of burst that to the political scene, every political reporter in the world wanted to find out who this woman was. First, we found out someone had a letter that said, barack broke up with genevieve. That was our first hint, so we had a first name. Then over the course of many, many months, putting all of this into the computer in variations, founa wedding announcement in new york that eventually took me to a name that i checked in the records in cnecticut and found another name and eventually found Genevieve Cook and she struck up a conversation with me over the course of man many weeks. At one point she wrote to me an email that ill never forget, saying, dear david, ive been reading about how you wrote your book on vietnam and i saw what how important it was for you to have contemporaneous documents. By the way, i kept a diary. So, i got her diary. Did you see the diary . Oh yes. Myself and my wife actually made up a long trip to visit genevieve in person and actually stayed with her and her partner for three days. The journal is very extensive. But in addition, genevieve gave toe copies of all the letters and post cards that barack had written to her between 1984 and 1986. In the earlier versions of the genevieve story, folks have barack leaving her behind in new york in 1985. Actually, as the letters confirmed genevieves story, barack asked her to accompany him to chicago. She declined. But barack continued to write her throughout his time in chicago. In fact, maybe the single greatest, my favorite document in this whole book is a letter that barack wrote to genevieve about 10 days after he first arrives in chicago having left her in new york. And in that letter he describes his twoday drive from manhattan hyde park. And he had stopped for the night at a motel in western pennsylvania. By the wa its hyde park, chicago not new york. Yes. Hyde park, the chicago neighborhood, which became his home base. And in this twoday drive, he stopped for the night at a motel just bore the pennsylvania ohio state line and had a very memorable conversation with the white motel owner. Now, this is a cversation that barack himself in subsuent years in commencement speeches in 2006 would go back and recount how memorable this challenging exchange with the motel owner was. David garrow well, thanks to the letter that genevieve had save from like 1985, there is the name of the motel. At pitt law school, i had a wonderful law librarian, marc silverman. And so i said to marc, here is this motel, 1985. And marc said, ok. So, i get on the web, start looked in the Pennsylvania StateProperty Ownership records and came back to me and said that in 1985 this motel was owned by a man named robert ilia. Left two phone messages. Ffent numbers, one is across e border in eastern ohio. Day, day and a half later, my phone ris, david, this is bob ilia. And ive had several greaphone conversations with mr. Ilia back then. And his manner on the phone with me matched up just pluperfectly with the description that barack recounted of him ihis 1985 letter and in the descriptions hes remembered in more recent years. So finding bob ilia, the mel owner, thanks to my law library and is something that was received very favorably here in washington last year. Let me as i was preparing for this 1,500page book, people knew i was reading it and they came up one day and said, have you seen this . I got to get this out of the way now. This is a tweetrom david raniss. I know youveeen this. Well put it up on the screen. Will say this only once, david garrow, author of new obama bio, was vile, undercutting, ignoble coetitor unlike any ive encountered. Ats that about . I do not know. You met David Maraniss. No, he says encountered. Ive never met or spoken with David Maraniss. Zero, no interaction whaoever. To me this is a, sort of, trumplike people ttg angry on twitter at someone ey dont know. There are two paragraphs in this book that comment on David Maraniss. One where im quoting each of baracks three previous girlfriends alex mcnear, then genevieve, then sheila jager about their experiences with David Maraniss contacting them. And then theres a second paragraph where i quote the new york review of books and Nicholas Alamain in the n