Mahani travel biography of barack

Senator Barack Obama in Fayetteville, North Carolina in 2008. Credit: Flickr/Wondermonkey2k.

I believe that life is chaotic, a jumble of accidents, ambitions,
misconceptions, bold intentions, lazy happenstances, and unintended
consequences, yet I also believe that there are connections that illuminate
our world, revealing its endless mystery and wonder.

I find these connections
in story, in history, threading together individual lives as well as disparate
societies—and they were everywhere I looked in the story of Barack Obama.

--David Maraniss, “Introduction”, Barack Obama: The Story (2012)

The unlikely journey of President Barack Obama began when his father and mother met in an introductory Russian class at the University of Hawaii in 1960.

Their paths crossed improbably because Barack Obama Sr., a bright student from Nairobi, Kenya, enrolled in the university after reading a story in the Saturday Evening P