Barack Obama was by no means a perfect president, but he was still pretty damn good, and he was and is a great reader as well. We have been treated to stories about the Obama family’s bookstore visits, to reading lists and book recommendations, and to Obama’s own books, both of which show not only Obama’s writing talent, but also how books and reading shaped his life and his presidency. Given Obama’s status as an A+ bookworm, I thought it might be valuable to gather his reading lists and book recommendations into one big post so anybody who wants to read like Barack Obama would know how to get started. The books mentioned below show how widely Obama reads: you’ll find history, current events, sociology, political science, and philosophy alongside memoirs, literary fiction, thrillers, and science fiction. As Obama knows, every genre has its place and time and every book can teach us something about the world or can make living in the world a little bit easier. Or both. So here are Obama’s recommended books, in reverse chronological order: On October 12, 2018, Obama posted a list of books that speak to our current political climate: Here is what he recommended:
The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die by Keith Payne How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt The New York Times article “Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not” by Matthew Desmond The Atlantic article “Americans Aren’t Practicing Democracy Anymore” by Yoni Applebaum The Atlantic article “A Warning From Europe: The Worst is Yet to Come” by Anne Applebaum
On August 19th, 2018, Obama posted a list of his favorite reading from the summer: Here’s what he recommended:
Educated by Tara Westover Warlight by Michael Ondaatje A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul An American Marriage by Tayari Jones Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World — and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Rönnlund
On July 13th, 2018, Obama posted a list of recommended reading about Africa in anticipation of his first trip to Africa since his presidency: Here’s what he recommended:
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe A Grain of Wheat by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie The Return by Hisham Matar The World As It Is by Ben Rhodes
On June 16th, 2018, Obama posted a list of recent favorite reading: Here’s what he recommended:
Futureface: A Family Mystery, an Epic Quest, and the Secret to Belonging by Alex Wagner The New Geography of Jobs by Enrico Moretti Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deneen The Atlantic article “The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy” by Matthew Stewart In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History by Mitch Landrieu From the Rand Corporation, “Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life” by Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich
On December 31, 2017, Obama posted a list of his favorite books (and songs) from 2017: Here’s what he recommended:
The Power by Naomi Alderman Grant by Ron Chernow Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond Janesville: An American Story by Amy Goldstein Exit West by Mohsin Hamid Five-Carat Soul by James McBride Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout Dying: A Memoir by Cory Taylor A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward Coach Wooden and Me by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Basketball (and Other Things) by Shea Serrano
Obama’s book recommendations from earlier years come from sources other than Facebook. On January 16, 2017, The New York Times published a transcript of an interview with Michiko Kakutani entitled “President Obama on What Books Mean to Him.” Here are the books he mentions (the first four were given as a gift to Malia):
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead Gilead by Marilynne Robinson The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff Shakespeare’s tragedies Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul
On October 21, 2016, Wired published a piece called “Get Ready to Carve Out 89 Hours for President Obama’s Essential Reads.” Here are the books on that list:
The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954–63 by Taylor Branch The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American by Richard S. Tedlow Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo
On August 12th, 2016, the Obama White House website published Obama’s Summer 2016 reading list:
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
Alongside his Summer 2016 reading list, Obama listed his Summer 2015 book list as well:
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow
Finally, here are the books currently listed as Obama’s favorites on his Facebook profile:
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison Moby Dick by Herman Melville Shakespeare’s tragedies Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63 by Taylor Branch Gilead by Marilynne Robinson Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson The Bible The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln
Want to read more about Obama? Check out this guide to Obama memoirs and books and this round-up of memoirs from Obama staffers.
