New Biography About Obama Focuses On His Life In NYC
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A new biography about Barack Obama has some people asking if anything in a president's past is off-limits.
The new book focuses on the president as a young man living in New York City and shows him in love and in turmoil.
The young Barack Obama portrayed in a new book struggled to feel at home in New York while attending Columbia University, CBS 2's Mary Calvi reported. He shared his conflict with his girlfriends, Calvi reported.
One of these girlfriends was Genevieve Cook. According to an excerpt of the book published in Vanity Fair, Cook met Obama at a Christmas Party in 1983 at an East Village apartment. Early in their relationship, Obama confessed to Cook how he searched for the "perfect, ideal woman... at the expense of hooking up with available girls."
In her journal, Cook wrote ""I can't help thinking that what he would really want, be powerfully drawn to, was a woman, very strong, very upright, a fighter, a laugher, well-experienced -- a black woman I keep seeing her as."
But Cook fell in love anyway, and 22-year-old Barack Obama began having the deepest, most romantic relationship of his young life.
Cook wrote in her journal about their relationship. In one entry she wrote "The sexual warmth is definitely there." Just one month later, she wrote "Barack -- still intrigues me, but so much going on beneath the surface, out of reach. Guarded, controlled."
Once, Cook told a young Obama that she loved him. His response: "Thank you."
Later that year, Obama temporarily moved in with Cook. It would be the beginning of the end of their year-long relationship.
Is anything in the president's past off limits? Sound off in our comments section below.
