What were Rahm Emanuel, Sean Penn & Mikhail Gorbachev doing together in Chicago?

Three men accused of building Molotov cocktails were planning attacks at President Obama's Chicago campaign headquarters and at the home of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel during this weekend's NATO Summit, prosecutors said.

Michelle Obama's 2010 push for a wholesale overhaul of a White House advisory team she viewed as more concerned with electioneering than backing expansive health-care reforms and other major initiatives that President Obama espoused before his historic 2008 win reflects a coming of age for a woman initially dubious about Washington life. That's the broad view of "The Obamas," slated to go on sale Tuesday. Its author, New York Times Washington correspondent Jodi Kantor, emailed ABC News that she was unavailable for an interview today. But the opening anecdote of a roughly 3,300-word extraction of Kantor's new tome, appearing in today's Times, depicts a Michelle Obama "privately fuming" in January 2010 over the loss of Democrat Edward Kennedy's long-held Massachusetts senate seat and the outward calm with which her husband was absorbing that defeat: "… Barack Obama was even-keeled as usual in meetings," the Times' distillation reads, "refusing to dwell on the failure or lash out at his staff. The first lady, however, could not fathom how the White House had allowed the crucial seat, needed to help pass the president's health care legislation and the rest of his agenda, to slip away, several current and former aides said. "To her, the loss was more evidence of what she had been saying for a long time: Mr. Obama's advisers were too insular and not strategic enough. She cherished the idea of her husband as a transformational figure, but thanks in part to the health care deals the administration had cut, many voters were beginning to view him as an ordinary politician." Since 2007, author Kantor has been covering the Obamas' political and personal lives. Hers is the latest in a series of books about the first lady—several have focused on her fashion sensibilities and personal ethos—a Harvard Law graduate and former Illinois hospital administrator whose ambivalences about politics have long been known. (The New Yorker quoted her thusly in 1996: "… He's too much of a good guy for the kind of brutality, the skepticism" of politics.) The Web site home page for Kantor's book, which is based on interviews with 30 current and former presidential aides, summarily suggests that 2008's historic victory represented a turning point in the Obama's on-running household debate over the merits of politics. "Contrary to her fears," the home page reads, "politics now seemed like a worthwhile, even noble pursuit. Together they planned a White House life that would be as normal and sane as possible. Then they moved in." Initially, according to the excerpt in the Times, Michelle Obama aimed to remain in Chicago until her daughters' school year ended, prepping for a much-altered existence under a Washington spotlight. But all other first families had moved in together, all at once, Kantor writes. Michelle Obama relented on that point. And while Michelle Obama initially balked, Kantor's sources told her, at fulfilling a slew of sometimes conventional obligations—hosting an annual luncheon for congressional wives was one of them—she eventually gave in to most of those demands. Eventually plotting her own path, she launched high-profile campaigns to celebrate the contributions of military veterans and to fight childhood obesity. As support for her husband continued to flag, including among his more ardent early defenders, she injected herself further and ramped up her candor. Kantor writes: "But that spring, Mrs. Obama made it clear that she thought her husband needed a new team, according to her aides. When the president decided to deliver a lofty speech about overhauling immigration laws in June 2010, even though there was no legislation on the table and the effort could hurt vulnerable Democrats, Mr. [former White House Chief of Staff Rahm] Emanuel objected. "Aides did not produce the speech he wanted and the president stayed up much of the night rewriting — but the address drew a flat reception. Mr. Obama was irritated, two advisers said …" Amid the tensions of 2010, Emanuel offered to resign. His boss wouldn't allow it. Emanuel took office as Chicago's mayor in May 2011.