The Ultimate Guide to Reading Like Barack Obama

It seems fair to say that a good president is going to be a good reader. The reverse isn’t necessarily true—lots and lots of great readers would make terrible presidents—but surely a good president is going to be one who appreciates books? What better way is there to learn about the current state of the world, to absorb the lessons of history, and to understand the varieties of human experience than to be a reader? 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