The first lady Michelle Obama spent her first two years in the White House jockeying with the chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, for her husband's affections and feuding over the course of the Obama presidency, according to an explosive new book.

The Obamas, by the New York times writer Jodi Kantor, uses substantial access to White House insiders to paint a portrait of the administration that is more chaotic and troubled with in-fighting than has previously been understood. The first two years of the administration, Kantor suggests, were marked by a tug of war between the first lady and Emanuel.

In an early peek of the new book, the Huffington Post reveals that Michelle Obama had "doubts" about Emanuel being given the top administrative job in the White House even before they moved in in January 2009.

Once in situ, her apprehensions appeared to be justified, at least from her perspective. Emanuel barred Obama, Kantor says, from sitting in on the early morning staff meetings that kick-started the day. She was cut-off from the inner circle and isolated in her first lady's premises.

According to the Huffington Post, Kantor writes that aides referred to the East Wing as "Guam – pleasant but powerless."

"Michelle and Rahm Emanuel had almost no bond; their relationship was distant and awkward from the beginning," the HuffPost quotes from the book. "She had been skeptical of him when he was selected, and now he returned the favor."

Kantor's analysis is that for Emanuel, first ladies were always problematic – stemming back to his fractious relationship with Hillary Clinton in the 1990s.

The Obamas author can claim credibility for her book from the 33 interviews she conducted with White House staffers (though the Obamas themselves did not participate).

Though she portrays Michelle as a slightly lost individual clammering for a role, Kantor also records a number of successes she notched up against Emanuel in their vying for the president's attention.

In 2010 Emanuel offered to resign as chief of staff, Kantor claims, after a series of newspaper articles were published suggesting he was the only person left in the White House holding the Obama presidency together. The resignation offer, which Obama refused to accept, came at the culmination of heated disputes over healthcare reform in which the chief of staff came head-to-head with the first lady.

According to the book, Michelle was unhappy about the horse trading that Emanuel was leading to push the reform bill through Congress. Kantor writes: "The chief of staff was trying to convince the president to scale back his health care efforts, but the first lady wanted him to push forward. Emanuel wanted to win by the standard measures of presidential success: legislative victories, poll numbers. Michelle Obama had more persona criteria: Was her husband fulfilling their mission?"

When the chips were down, the president sided with his wife. "Barack Obama had made a choice in the contest of the worldviews that surrounded him, between his chief of staff's point of view and his wife's. His decision to pursue the healthcare overhaul later seemed to mark the beginning of the end of Emanuel's tenure in the White House."

Kantor also suggests that Michelle won a similar battle with Emanuel over immigration reform. Again in 2010, she wanted her husband to stay true to his own political story and champion comprehensive immigration reform.

Emanuel, ever the pragmatist, thought a push on immigration would be pointless as there was no way in the run-up to the midterm elections that any legislation would pass Congress. In the outcome, the first lady persuaded Obama to deliver a speech on the issue, which then came to nothing.

"The first lady fumed," Kantor writes. "She took it as more proof that her husband's advisers were poorly serving him. The speech incident confirmed her worst fears, and by that point, several aides said, Michelle was bluntly telling her husband that he needed a new team."

Emanuel quit the White House in October 2010 to run for the post that he now holds as mayor of Chicago.