'Barack Obama: The Story' by David Maraniss hits stores WASHINGTON, June 19 (UPI) -- A biography of Barack Obama that hit bookstores Tuesday suggests the president exaggerated parts of his life for the sake of the narrative in his own memoir. David Maraniss, author of "Barack Obama: The Story," in an interview with MSNBC's "Morning Joe" said in "Dreams From My Father" Obama described his struggle as a half-African growing up in Hawaii and Indonesia to find his identity and tended to "see everything through a racial lens." "I don't think it's a venal reason," Maraniss said. I think it says more about a writer's pressures to try to tell a story than anything about his larger character. Maraniss, a Washington Post editor, won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of President Bill Clinton and wrote a book, "First In His Class." With only five months before the presidential election, staffers for presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney are believed to be giving it a careful read, looking for ammunition. On "Morning Joe," Maraniss said he examined the version of Obama served up by his enemies as well as the president's narrative of his life. He went back through several generations of the president's ancestors and said he found that in Kenya the Obama family was helped far more by evangelical Christians than they were by Muslims.