NEW DETAILS ABOUT OBAMA'S FATHER,

Granny's oral history was not of heroic deeds but of the wrenching change brought by the British, whose rule by gun and tax collector destroyed the Luo's ancient way of life in the span of a single generation.

Obama's grandfather was among the first of his clan to adopt the white man's ways - trading his loincloth for suits and shoes, learning to speak, read and write English - only to wind up embittered and broken after a lifetime of servitude to his colonial masters.

From Granny, Obama learned that the father who had abandoned him had been himself abandoned, at age nine, by his mother, and as a teenager beaten bloody and banished from home by his father for his rebellious spirit.

Despite his stellar grades, he was expelled from a mission school - "He would sneak girls into his dormitory," Granny said, "for he could always talk very sweetly to girls" - and when he was arrested and jailed for his involvement in the independence movement, his father refused to bail him out.