Summer reading lists are meant both for self-improvement and to
impress an audience. That boy reading Proust on the beach has an
eye for the girl nearby turning the pages of Virginia Woolf as
much as he does for his own vow to get to the end of the damn
thing at last. Presidential summer reading lists are no
different, meant as much to titillate a particular public as to
inventory a private disposition. When the President announces
that he is reading, say, a new three-volume history of the
Louisiana Purchase, he may actually be reading it, but he is
also signalling to the commentariat watching from the next dune
that it’s time for them to go into their “surprisingly
thoughtful statesman” bit.  Nonetheless, it is hard not to
brood, in old-fashioned Kremlinological style, on the meanings
of George W. Bush’s syllabus for this particular summer. Where
in summers past he has read fiction by Tom Wolfe, or a
comprehensive history of salt—both very good things in the right
seasonal doses—this summer, perhaps under th