Introduction: The Obama you don't know
Few if any of his predecessors took the oath of office with higher public hopes for his success than President Obama on Jan. 20, 2009.
Millions of Americans hailed his election as an end...
Chapter I: A childhood of privilege, not hardship
First lady Michelle Obama told the Democratic National Convention that "Barack and I were both raised by families who didn't have much in the way of money or material possessions."
It is...
Chapter II: The myth of the 'rock-star professor'
Time magazine gushed in 2008 about Barack Obama's 12-year tenure as a law lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, saying, "Within a few years, he had become a rock-star professor with...
Chapter III: The 1997 speech that launched Obama
Few doubt that Barack Obama's stirring oration before the 2004 Democratic National Convention vaulted him into the national limelight.
But another, less-heralded Obama address --...
Chapter IV: For the slumlord's defense, Barack Obama, Esq.
Writing in his 1995 autobiography, "Dreams from My Father," Obama said he became "a civil rights lawyer" because "to lend meaning to a community's suffering and take part in its healing -- that...
Chapter V: Obama's toughest critics on the Left
Barack Obama's carefully constructed image as a civil rights lawyer who wanted to heal the black community was greeted with skepticism by some Chicago activists.
"I never drank the...
Chapter VI: The poor people Obama left behind
Four years after Barack Obama's historic election as president, little seems to have changed for the African-American communities on Chicago's South Side.
The lack of change -- or the...
Chapter VII: The myth of Obama as state Senate reformer
Shortly after Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, Prairie State Blue, a liberal blog, attributed his victory to the fact that Illinois' deeply entrenched government corruption had...
Chapter VIII: Obama's state pension scheme
State Sen. Barack Obama and members of an Illinois lobbying group representing politically connected minority-owned businesses launched a campaign in 2000 to pressure state pension funds to help...
Chapter IX: The Arab-American network behind Obama
President Obama's controversial relationships with radical figures like Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi have been well-publicized in recent years.
Prior to his academic...
Chapter X: Obama brings Chicago politics to Washington
Chicago has been called the home of "gangster government." How bad is it?
Consider the following facts about the city from which President Obama rose through the ranks of American public
