[U]At the age of 27, Obama was accepted to Harvard University's law school, where he graduated magna cum laude - with great honours - and was elected president of the Harvard Law Review, responsible for editing US jurisprudence's most prestigious publication. [/U]He was the first African-American to hold the post, and the resulting publicity brought with it a book deal, which resulted in the publication of Dreams From My Father. The book is remarkable for its candour and insight - revealing not only Obama's complex family tree but also his use of marijuana and cocaine as a student.
Graduating from Harvard, Obama returned to teach at the University of Chicago and work for a law firm specialising in civil rights. He met and married a fellow lawyer, Michelle Robinson, and they have two daughters together - Malia and Natasha. By 1996 he had been elected to the Illinois state senate, and was ready for greater things. In 2000 he made a misguided bid to win the nomination for a safe congressional seat but was decisively defeated by veteran incumbent Bobby Rush. "It was a race in which everything that could go wrong did go wrong," he recounted in his second book, The Audacity of Hope, published last year.
