There were points in researching his new biography, Barack Obama: The Story, when David Maraniss says he was struck by the obvious but profound thought of how amazing the personal story of the current President of the United States is.

In an “On the Issues” session Wednesday with Mike Gousha, the Law School’s distinguished fellow in law and public policy, Maraniss discussed his extraordinarily deep research into the family roots and early life of Obama, touching upon episodes and influences that would not conventionally be associated with a path to the presidency. The suicide of a great-grandmother. An absent father with alcohol problems who abused wives. Several years as a child in Indonesia, living in modest circumstances. A period in Obama’s youth where his two major interests were basketball and marijuana.

Maraniss contrasted the two presidents who have been the subject of high critically-acclaimed biographies that he wrote: Bill Clinton, “who was running for president from the day he was born basically,” and Obama, who “showed no inclination to what he was to become.” Maraniss said he stood in the neighborhood where the elementary-school age Obama lived in Jakarta, Indonesia, and was hit by the thought of “that incredible journey” from there to the White House.