Born January 17, 1964 - less than six months after Martin Luther King Jr."s March on Washington - Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama was raised on the South Side of Chicago, where her father (who would later succumb to MS) was a city water-plant worker and her mother, a secretary for Spiegel catalog. Through dogged reporting and with a deft touch, Peter Slevin brilliantly traces Michelle"s life: from the conventionalities and intricacies of her family to her high school years; from her graduation from Princeton University and Harvard Law School during the charged racial atmosphere of the late 1970s and early "80s engendered by affirmative action to her stint as a corporate lawyer at Sidley & Austin in Chicago where she met Barack; from her attempts to balance life as a mother, wife, and professional woman to her grudging support of Barack"s run for the presidency during which she played a crucial role in his election. Of course, the drama of the two presidential campaigns and of the...