Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama

by David J. Garrow,
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 11, 2017

One evening, while he was a student at Columbia University, Barack Obama confessed to his girlfriend, Genevieve Cook, that he had felt sorry for himself when he was 15 years old and cried a lot. Genevieve was pleased that Barack was opening up and urged him to “Speak to me.” More often, however, she felt that he carefully filtered everything in his mind and heart. “There’s something also there of smoothed veneer, of guardedness,” she told him. “I’m still left with this feeling … of a bit of a wall — a veil.”