Every Book Barack Obama Has Recommended During His Presidency
Whether he's reading to kids at the White House, hitting up local bookstores on Black Friday, or giving recommendations to his daughters, President Barack Obama may as well be known as the Commander in Books. POTUS is an avid reader and recently spoke to the New York Times about the significant, informative and inspirational role literature has played in his presidency, crediting books for allowing him to "slow down and get perspective." With his presidency coming to an end this Friday, EW looked back at Obama's lit picks over the years  because it can't hurt to read like a great leader. ObamaForBookClubPresident2017, anyone?, See a comprehensive list of every book Obama has recommended during his presidency, Books for Daughters, 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, 1. The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer 2. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garca Mrquez 3. The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing 4. The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston, Independent Bookstore Purchases, 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, 1. Brown Girl Dreaming, Jacqueline Woodson 2. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad 3. Nora Webster, Colm Toibin 4. The Laughing Monsters, Denis Johnson 5. Age of Ambition Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China, Evan Osnos 6. Being Mortal Medicine and What Matters in the End, Dr. Atul Gawande 7. Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms, Katherine Rundell 8. The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan 9. Redwall series, Brian Jacques 10. Junie B. Jones series, Barbara Park 11. Nuts To You, Lynn Rae Perkins, Summer Reads 2016, 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, 1. Barbarian Days A Surfing Life, William Finnegan 2. H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald 3. The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins 4. Seveneves, Neal Stephenson 5. The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead, Summer Reads 2015, He also released a list of his summer favorites back in 2015, 1. All That Is, James Salter 2. The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert 3. The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri 4. Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates 5. Washington A Life, Ron Chernow 6. All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr, Childhood Classics, During a trip to a public library in Washington's Anacostia neighborhood in 2015, Obama shared some of his childhood favorites with a group of young students.He also read and acted out Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak to kids at the White House in 2014. 1. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson 2. Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck 3. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald 4. Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak, All-time Favorites, 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, 1. Moby Dick, Herman Melville 2. Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson 3. Song Of Solomon, Toni Morrison 4. Parting The Waters, Taylor Branch 5. Gilead, Marylinne Robinson 6. Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam 7. The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton 8. Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois 9. The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene 10. The Quiet American, Graham Greene 11. Cancer Ward, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 12. Gandhi's autobiography 13. Working, Studs Terkel 14. Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith 15. Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith 16. All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren, Excellent Novels and Poetry collections, 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 "I thought Gone Girl was a well-constructed, well-written book," he told the Times. Obama is also a fan of sci-fi titles like Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem for the escapism they provide. "The scope of it was immense," he said. "So that was fun to read, partly because my day-to-day problems with Congress seem fairly petty  not something to worry about. Aliens are about to invade!", 1. Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese 2. To the End of the Land, David Grossman 3. Purity, Jonathan Franzen 4. A Bend in the River, V. S. Naipau 5. Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff 6. Lush Life, Richard Price 7. Netherland, Joseph O'Neill 8. Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, Salman Rushdie 9. Redeployment, Phil Klay 10. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison 11. Plainsong, Kent Haruf 12. The Way Home, George Pelecanos 13. What Is the What, Dave Eggers 14. Philosophy  Literature, Peter S Thompson 15. Collected Poems, Derek Walcott 16. In Dubious Battle, John Steinbeck 17. Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn 18. The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin 19. Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling, Books About Other Presidents , 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. He's turned to these books for advice, 1. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Edmund Morris 2. John Adams, David McCullough 3. Lincoln The Biography of a Writer, Fred Kaplan 4. Defining Moment FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, Jonathan Alte 5. FDR, Jean Edward Smith 6. Team of Rivals The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin 7. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Informative Reads, 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. 1. Hot, Flat, and Crowded Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America, Thomas L Friedman 2. Ghost Wars The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, Steve Coll 3. Unequal Democracy The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, Larry Bartels 4. The Power Broker Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, Robert A. Caro, Non-Fiction Titles , Fact or fiction, the president knows that reading keeps the mind sharp. He also delved into these non-fiction reads, 1. Age of Ambition Chasing Fortune, Evan Osnos 2. Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman 3. Moral Man And Immoral Society, Reinhold Niebuhr 4. A Kind And Just Parent, William Ayers 5. The Post-American World, Fareed Zakaria 6. Lessons in Disaster, Gordon Goldstein 7. Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari 8. The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin 9. Andy Grove The Life and Times of an American, Richard S Tedlow 10. Behind the Beautiful Forevers Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, Katherine Boo, Additional Authors and Philosophers, Throughout his time in office, Obama has also recommended a dozen other authors and literary figures of note, even though he might not have named specific books. Check them out below, 1. Langston Hughes 2. Richard Wright 3. Mark Twain 4. Malcolm X 5. Philip Roth 6. Saul Bellow 7. Junot Daz 8. Dave Eggers 9. Zadie Smith 10. Barbara Kingsolver 11. St. Augustine 12. Friedrich Nietzsche 13. Jean-Paul Sartre 14. Thomas Jefferson 15. Ralph Waldo Emerson 16. Abraham Lincoln 17. Paul Tillich 18. E.L. Doctorow