The great strategist who masterminded Obama's historic election campaigns opens up about his years as a young journalist, political consultant, and ultimately senior adviser to the president. The man behind some of the greatest political changes of the last decade, David Axelrod has devoted a lifetime to questioning political certainties and daring to bring fresh thinking into the political landscape.

David Axelrod has always been a believer. Whether as a young journalist investigating city corruption, a campaign consultant guiding underdog candidates against entrenched orthodoxy, or as senior adviser to the president during one of the worst crises in American history, Axelrod held fast to his faith in the power of stories to unite diverse communities and ignite transformative political change. As a child of the '60s in New York City, Axelrod worked his first campaigns during a tumultuous decade that began with soaring optimism and ended in violence and chaos. As a young newspaperman in Chicago during the 1970s and '80s, Axelrod witnessed another world transformed when he reported on the dissolution of the last of the big city political machines -- Richard Daley, Dan Rostenkowski, and Harold Washington -- along with the emergence of a dynamic black independent movement that ultimately made Obama's ascent possible. After cutting his teeth in the rollicking world of Chicago journalism