Upcoming LIVE guest Darryl Pinckney discusses the new biography of President Barack Obama by David Maraniss:

No matter what, the Republicans are promising to bring Obama’s first term to a close with another budget crisis. The first term is becoming the story, the referendum. Meanwhile, Obama’s fight for a second term has had the curious effect of making books about his rise somewhat passé. We are familiar with the exoticism of his story: the absent African father; the young white anthropologist mother in Indonesia; the basketball team in Hawaii. We know about Chicago, the discovery of the black community and the future First Lady. YouTube has him when at Harvard. And then that Speech. Moreover, we know much of this from Obama himself. Dreams from My Father is justly famous.

Yet David Maraniss in his proudly sprawling Barack Obama: The Storypresents a biography of the president that he is determined goes deeper than anything else out there. He is clearly pleased to have reached previously untapped sources.Barack Obama: The Story is well over five hundred pages and at its end the future president is just twenty-seven years old, on his way to Harvard Law School. Many share his subject, but Maraniss is the large beast come to the watering hole.

Read more of Pinckney’s analysis here.

Darryl Pinckney will be at LIVE on November 29 for the 2012 Robert B. Silvers Lecture co-presented with the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers to discuss race in American politics.