Books Recommended by Barack Obama

In Barack Obama’s words:

As 2018 draws to a close, I’m continuing a favorite tradition of mine and sharing my year-end lists. It gives me a moment to pause and reflect on the year through the books I found most thought-provoking, inspiring, or just plain loved. It also gives me a chance to highlight talented authors – some who are household names and others who you may not have heard of before. Here’s my best of 2018 list.

In Barack Obama’s words:

As a devoted reader, the president has been linked to a lengthy list of novels and poetry collections over the years — he admits he enjoys a thriller.

In Barack Obama’s words:

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According to the president’s Facebook page and a 2008 interview with the New York Times, these titles are among his most influential forever favorites:

• Moby Dick, Herman Melville
• Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Song Of Solomon, Toni Morrison
• Parting The Waters, Taylor Branch
• Gilead, Marylinne Robinson
• Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam
• The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton
• Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois
• The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene
• The Quiet American, Graham Greene
• Cancer Ward, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• Gandhi’s autobiography
• Working, Studs Terkel
• Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith
• Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith
• All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren

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In Barack Obama’s words:

In November 2014, Obama took a trip to D.C. independent bookstore Politics and Prose to honor small businesses and add to his personal library. Accompanied by daughters Malia and Sasha, POTUS picked up novels from the Redwall fantasy series by Brian Jacques, as well as some from the Junie B. Jones series by Barbara Park. He also added these titles to his heavy bags:

• Brown Girl Dreaming, Jacqueline Woodson
• Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
• Nora Webster, Colm Toibin
• The Laughing Monsters, Denis Johnson
• Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China, Evan Osnos
• Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, Dr. Atul Gawande
• Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms, Katherine Rundell
• The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan
• Redwall series, Brian Jacques
• Junie B. Jones series, Barbara Park
• Nuts To You, Lynn Rae Perkins

In Barack Obama’s words:

Just like us, the president enjoys a good beach read while relaxing in the sun. In 2016, he released his list of summer vacation books:

• Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, William Finnegan
• H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald
• The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins
• Seveneves, Neal Stephenson
• The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead

In Barack Obama’s words:

Fact or fiction, the president knows that reading keeps the mind sharp. He also delved into these non-fiction reads.

In Barack Obama’s words:

He may have the country’s finest experts at his fingertips, but it still doesn’t hurt to read up on environmental and economic issues.

In Barack Obama’s words:

The Oval office can be a lonely place, so reading about your forefather’s experience could only help. “The biographies have been useful, because I do think that there’s a tendency, understandable, to think that whatever’s going on right now is uniquely disastrous or amazing or difficult,” said President Obama in an interview.

In Barack Obama’s words:

The president also released a list of his summer favorites back in 2015:

• All That Is, James Salter
• The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert
• The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri
• Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Washington: A Life, Ron Chernow
• All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr

In Barack Obama’s words:

When asked what books he recommended to his 18-year-old daughter Malia, Obama gave the Times a list that included The Naked and the Dead and One Hundred Years of Solitude. “I think some of them were sort of the usual suspects […] I think she hadn’t read yet. Then there were some books that are not on everybody’s reading list these days, but I remembered as being interesting.” Here’s what he included:

• The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
• One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
• The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
• The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston

In Barack Obama’s words:

According to the president’s Facebook page and a 2008 interview with the New York Times, this title is among his most influential forever favorites.

In Barack Obama’s words:

Fact or fiction, the president knows that reading keeps the mind sharp. He also delved into these non-fiction reads:

• Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Evan Osnos
• Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
• Moral Man And Immoral Society, Reinhold Niebuhr
• A Kind And Just Parent, William Ayers
• The Post-American World, Fareed Zakaria
• Lessons in Disaster, Gordon Goldstein
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari
• The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
• Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American, Richard S Tedlow
• Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, Katherine Boo

In Barack Obama’s words:

The biographies have been useful, because I do think that there’s a tendency, understandable, to think that whatever’s going on right now is uniquely disastrous or amazing or difficult.