We actually went to a little Catholic School for 2. 5 years. And his father got another job working for union oil. Was africa after that . It was very controversial. There are people that were very upset. Obama won in a landslide. But everywhere in the world, there is some controversy about any politician. So there are some questions about it. But not everyone understands. What was his lifelike in jakarta . Guest he is perfectly immersed. Imagine a sixyearold child being immersed in the culture. Sort of a lower middle class action. The exotic smells of jakarta. His father riding a motorbike to his job. His mother was there as well. That was his wife, life, he adapted. He had to adapt. But he did the best he could. Host why did he leave jakarta in 1971 . Guest his mother couldnt afford to send them there. Those 3. 5 years, he is in indonesia, immersed in the language. The mother is waking up at 4 00 a. M. To teach him with english schoolbooks to supplement his learning. It is very difficult. And the whole process was something that she realized that she loved indonesia, she was still married, she wanted to stay. But it was coming to a point where she had to make a key decision. It turned out that he could get into the best elite private schools in honolulu, so he went back in fifth grade to start their. Host he lived with his grandparents in honolulu in an apartment . Guest yes, they moved to an apartment. It was five blocks from the school. He lived there from fifth grade through his senior year. Host from ages 11 to 18 years old . Guest yes, that is correct. There were some subtle changes. His mother to come back. She came back to study in graduate school. They live a couple blocks away for about two years. Then she went back indonesia again. The bulk of that. Maxima thats what happened. Host that was 1971 going to 1979 in honolulu . Guest yes. Host what was his lifelike . Will kind of degrees did he get . Guest he was in indonesia and then his parents were separated and soontobe divorce but he was always very able to adapt. He was a fine student, but not a serious threat by any means. He was smart enough to get by with his grades without ever really applying himself to hard. He loves basketball. One time he saw his father was in honolulu when his father came back from three weeks and he came back and gave him a basketball for christmas. Basketball was incredibly important to the young barack obama. That is an important theme in his adolescence and life. It connected to different parts of them. He came down to kansas to be the coach of some of the great figures in basketball history came out of kansas. Even adolph rupp. He got his basketball genes from his family. His young black kid could still identify with africanamericans in a way that he had not been living with his white grandparents. All of these other meetings were given to it, it was more than just something fun to play. That is really one of the central themes of his adolescence. Host you write in your book, david maraniss, barack obama the story, that he could not know that the luckiest thing that can happen to him is that his father had left. Spearing his mother and him years of unpredictability and potential domestic violence. Guest well, i can write that. When you study it, it sounds speculative, but its a difficult reality. Its a very big reality. And it grows out of what happened after. After they had that short time together, she became entranced by him. She called him by name. And she went back to kenya with him. And i interviewed her. I was the first to interview her. You know, all of these biographers come after me. But in any case, when i talk to reach baker, she told me stories about how abusive they could be. And that wouldve been when he and ann durham together. Host one in kenya, we talked about ruth baker, and i want to show a little piece of video. [inaudible] david, who was not . This is the fifth member, an american the lived in [inaudible] he is also a writer. [inaudible] [speaking in native tongue] has she talked to the media . She never talked to any of them. [inaudible] [laughter] to that is a tough question. [inaudible] yes but that never happened. It is too hypothetical. Guest lisa helps me find ruth baker. In that interview, i will never forget sitting for several hours in corning her heart out. Host she married and divorced barack obama senior, but then she stayed in kenya . Guest yes, thats right. She had two children by barack obama senior. She stayed the whole time. She is still very much a part of nairobi in the community and runs a kindergarten there and has done so for several years. Host in 1964 to 1973, they were married. How long had she known him before she quit school . Guest she didnt quit, like, but she was teaching at that point. It was one of those very quick things, a couple of months, but she didnt know. And she said the reason he left cambridge is because he was kicked out. The harvard people have had enough of him with the drinking and the women. So they have been following very closely. I want to go back to one little thing. Just because this is so troubling to me in any historian. There are documents that show barack obama senior in honolulu. Theres no way he could have gone anywhere else and had that baby. He was in honolulu. Anyway, so he was kicked out of harvard and went back to nairobi. So he went back. He called himself doctor from then on. He never got his phd. But she found him a few months later. Found him in nairobi, not knowing what she was getting into. Host back to your book, barack obama the story, you write that what barack obama learned was devastating and disillusioning and a fallacy carefully constructed by his mother was shattered. His missing father was far from what he had been betrayed. Not the wall man, not a freedom fighter, not a polished professional. Brilliant, yes, but drinking and despair and disillusionment and disappointment. Guest is quite amazing to think about ann durham support of him and her support of him. And when she told him the story that she did. She never said a little word about his father, barack obama senior. I completely understand why she created this mythology about him. You know, year by year, he started to understand to some degree that the reality have to be different from what he had been told. But it wasnt until he got to kenya himself that he fully understood that. Host in the introduction, david maraniss, you write without dismissing the anger and confusion that he surely felt as he tried to short sort out his identity, he read to the root causes and a misunderstanding to his response to it. Guest this is not in any way diminishes the formation. But theres another thing involved. Which is his search for identity it involves leaving and being left. His father left before he was conscious. His mother, even as much as she loves him, inculcated his life and was gone for most of his formative adolescent years. So all of that is universal in a sense that transcends race. The struggles that he had were not just about race. You cant look at his life and view it through racial lines. Host in about 15 minutes, we will begin taking your calls for david maraniss. He will publish his 10th book, barack obama the story. We are getting a preview of the book tonight on booktv. We will put up the phone numbers. If youd like to dive in and Start Talking with our author, please go ahead and do so. Numbers on the bottom of your screen. You can also send an email. At booktv cspan. Org. Or you can ask questions via twitter. Twitter. Com booktv. Of all began in 15 or 20 minutes when we take your calls. Jeff cox was a classmate of the president at the high school. He said that iraq had the ability to project cool. Almost a nonchalant way. It was all part of the image thing, not just of him, but generally in hawaii, where in my mind there was some kind of line between sophisticated detachment and just slacker lately. And he exuded the sophisticated detachment. He has his act together in a way. He understood how things work, maybe a little better than the rest of us. Guest you know, that was when he was 15 or 16 years old. And you can see some of those characteristics today in his presidency. There are a lot of reasons for that detachment. Part of it has to do with hawaii. He was a native hawaiian and you just keep cool. No matter what else is going on. He had not come ridership with his buddies. Best of all, you know, just being cool. It was part of his formative years. He has always had that nature. Another aspect is more developed and related, i would say, or politics, which is in this country and all of its racial dynamics and explosiveness, a black person was discussed as being very cool. Host how much pot smoking did the president do . Guest well, there arent are particulars. You know, the whole notion of bill clinton saying that he never inhaled well when jay leno asked the president about it, you know, without going overboard my book documented thoroughly. That is what they did. You know, they had a thing called total absorption, but not only did you inhale, but everything in the car as you were smoking it. There are few people there of african students, one of the africanamericans and some others started calling him rocco, when i was with a ton of whats his name. With so many college students, they start to really go back and find their identities. That is what he is searching for. Some people call him barry instead of barack. Host why did he choose occidental reign. Guest he chose it because there was a girl that he met in brentwood before that time. And so he wanted to go for that reason. Occidental was like the next that. It was late in comfortable, a very bucolic, small and contained place. It was very comfortable. He really started to expand intellectually. I think he got his First Defense of destiny during those two years. But he left because it was too much like his high school. He wanted to experience the world. He was still trying to find himself. From honolulu to los angeles and new york, but it was first important to get to new york first. Host he starts at columbia. His first night in new york city where did he spend a . Guest is very dubious about this in my book, but he he couldnt get into his apartment. He couldnt get the key of the sublet of the front of his mothers. So he slept outside of his suitcase. He said he had called and came over there the next morning. Host genevieve makes the scene in new york city. Who is that . Guest Genevieve Cook is an australian whos mother had a second marriage to a notable american, so the family kind of had american ties. She came to new york city and met barack obama after he graduated columbia. They had a lot in common from the moment they met. They both had indonesian connections. The father and mother had lived in indonesia. He was a diplomat. And so she had lived there. Her family was in the upper crust. And so she and barry both have this connection the indonesian connections as well. [inaudible] a fabulous researcher at the Washington Post and gabriel banks. Eventually i found her and i can tell all that story because not because of the book but because of she had an abusive exhusband eventually i found an article in the New York Times about a lot of connections. Obama writes about a new girlfriend. He is going up to her familys estate. This wealthy area in connecticut. Host at columbia university, a classmate of the president , to be honest, he had never had many black friends, he said. I saw that switch happened most markedly during the period that i was most close to him. Barack obama was the most liberal person i ever met in terms of instructing his own identity. His achievement was really an achievement in the modern world. Guest Beenu Mahmood was one of a group of pakistani friends that barack obama had. They shared with him the he was comfortable that these guys. At columbia law school, they were very good guys. It is true that obama did his best. When i interview president obama in the oval office, he talked about the supporters in new york. But he started to make that transition in his long arc of his search for home. She was starting to happen and Beenu Mahmood was very perceptively seen that happen. Host why did the presidency president in new york after graduating from columbia . Guest he was trying to get a job wherever he could. He applied for a job in chicago after washington was elected mayor there. He didnt get anything. So the best he could do was stay in new york. He wouldnt want to go back to honolulu. He didnt have anyplace else. So he stayed there and as he put it, you try to make money for yourself and get a job. It is sort of a magazine or Consulting Firm called business international. For that year, he doesnt really like it there, but that is the period when they talk a lot. It is the period when he met genevieve. Host so david maraniss, going back to the quote, no life could have been the product of randomness like that of barack obama. Chicago became a part of that randomness . Guest well, the Mayoral Election in chicago was very attracted to him. And chicago was the place to be at that time. Oprah winfrey, michael jordan, the king of the bulls, Oprah Winfrey had her show, and barack obama who came anonymously. And he is arguably todays most influential. Host in Chicago Community organizer, you quote him. Saying that obama was one of the most cautious people i ever met in my life. He was never willing to to take risks, vote a straight nomination of someone who would have to weigh everything to death, and then take a dramatic risk at the end. Guest that sounds like president obama, too. Some ways that characteristic can be looked at as his life and career. But as a Community Organizer, the whole notion and method for Community Organizing was to take action, and you have to seize it. He was one of his mentors. Barack obama was sort of a different sort. Looking for ways to not confront in other ways. I can be host while he was there as a Community Organizer, what was the president s life like . Guest he lived in hyde park. A great part of the city, it is notoriously known as a city in the United States. Hyde park was a pocket of immigration. Seems very comfortable there. He would spend every day, which was maybe mostly poor, and there would be a bubbling bridge area, rich in terms of personality, i mean. He really felt at home for the first time in his life. He was embraced by a group of older black women who sort of took him under their wing and loved him and created a sense that he never felt before. It was incredibly frustrating. Not a lot during that time, he became a Community Organizer largely out of his mothers sensibility. You know, she was done organizing for women and artisans survive in a maledominated culture. His mother was a little bit naive in terms of the realities of the world. He started to see what power mac, how you get it, what he needed for real power, and thats what took him into politics. That is why my book ends there. Because hes won everything. His father is home. You eventually see that he finds a special woman, and that is michele obama. And his selfidentity and local power and he wants to go to harvard and come back to really get into that. Host in the interview they conducted on november 10, 2011, you quote him as saying that there is no doubt that what i retained of my politics with the sense that the only way i could ever have a sturdy sense of identity of who i was dependent on digging beneath the surface of people. The only way my life made sense is regardless of culture and race and religion, there is some commonality. The essential human truths and passions and hopes and moral precepts that are universal. Guest that is part of the speech that made him famous. The United States, not just red states and blue states. He presented himself as the personification of that notion. The presidency has been a rude awakening in terms of how far you can take that. So he could deal with the promise and frustrations of that idea ever since. As im sure we would both be experiencing in the telephone calls. Host so your book ends in 1989. He said there is another common . Guest i didnt want to get too ahead of myself, but i have every intention. Ive done a lot of reporting through the years. I dont want to do a quickie. I dont write my books for the politics of the moment. Host the book ends in 1989. But at this point, barack obama, so far lived in seattle and 1962 until 1967, back to honolulu and then back to indonesia. 1967 to 1971, back to honolulu, 79 to 1981, los angeles and then he moved to new york for columbia come he lived there for years, 1981 until 1985. In chicago for the first time in 1985 until 1989. Then off to harvard law school. Two more pieces of the book i would like to ask you about. We want to tie the story together. Now we are in 1989. Where is his father . His father died in 1982 in a car accident driving home drunk from a makeshift bar area when we were in nairobi, we saw the streets in the area where this took place in it was almost sadly inevitable. Host are his grandparents and mothers alive at this point . Guest yes, all three are alive. His mother died right before his book comes out. Host dreams from my father guest yes, dreams from my father. So she never got to see his political career at all. The grandmother was in many ways the study figure in his life. And she died a few days before he was elected president of the United States. Host two more quotes. By the time that barack obama reached chicago, the grandfather had retired after 20 years in the furniture business in another 20 selling insurance. It had ended his lifes work, which he never liked and never did well. He was a smart man who had not come close to filling his potential. During the years that he lived with him, the grandson alternated between taking pleasure and outsmarting the guy and feelings become a nation of sadness and hurt her, witnessing the despair of someone who is unfulfilled and you also write that there was nothing publicly excessive about their grandmother whod been and always will be a significant and underappreciated influence on barack obama, in particular in terms of personality and possibility of his life. They could not tolerate gossip behavior. She kept her own troubles for her struggle with alcoholism. Guest i should say, and i dont need to correct you, but it is pronounced a different way. So some people pronounce it one way and others pronounce it another. They were his grandparents. You know, i have done a lot of reporting about the grandmother. And what rock she was in the family. President obama acknowledged me during my interview with him and both of them are fascinating characters