Maraniss includes what he says are excerpts of diary entries from a woman named Genevieve Cook whom Obama dated while living in New York. "Barack – still intrigues me, but so much going on beneath the surface, out of reach," Cook wrote in one entry during their relationship. "Guarded, controlled... Have this feeling of wanting to take Barack away... he resists tho, I think, my efforts at pulling him away... chained and wanting to unravel it all only by himself. He is that sort of person – trying hard to be."
