Other than the former president himself, no one likely knows more about Barack Obama’s life than David Garrow. 

For more than 8 eight years, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian has been toiling away at what will be the most comprehensive biography ever published on Obama’s life when it comes out on May 9. 

“This has been the whole last nine years for me, starting in early 2008 after Barack won the Iowa caucuses, and I concluded that having written so much on Dr. King and African-American civil rights politics, I should found out something about who this guy was,” Garrow said Sunday from his home in Pittsburgh in his first major interview about his book for “The Jamie Weinstein Show” podcast. “This covers everything from when his father leaves Kenya in the late 1950s, really up through 2016, though the book primarily focuses on the period up through 2007.”

Despite Obama being in the public eye for more than a decade, Garrow chuckles at the idea that there is little of significance left to learn about the former president. 

“I think that people irrespective of their political views or partisan identification will be astonished—I cannot say that too strongly—will be profoundly astonished by how much important substance of Barack Obama’s life has not previously been known,” Garrow said.   ...