Obama Master Reading List 2008-2016
Monday, Oct. 3, 2016, 1:09 p.m.Chevy Chase LibrarySocial Sciences
Obama Master Reading List 2008-2016
One thing I'm going to miss about President Obama: the man reads. The busiest man in the world still makes time to read. He is a role model for us all. He reads good stuff too. So in honor of the Reader-in-Chief, I have compiled a master list of all the books that the president was reported to have read from 2008 until the present. Please let me know if I have missed any.
2016
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
2015
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
The Whites by Richard Price
Purity by Jonathan Franzen
The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin
The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
2014
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
The Laughing Monsters by Denis Johnson
Nora Webster by Colm Toibin
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End Atul Gawande
Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos
2013
Reading list not disclosed
2012
Reading list not disclosed
2011
The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do Daniel Woodrell
Rodin’s Debutante Ward Just
Cutting for Stone Abraham Verghese
To the End of the Land David Grossman
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
2010
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
Tinkers by Paul Harding
A Few Corrections by Brad Leithauser
President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime by Lou Cannon
2009
John Adams David McCullough
Hot, Flat and Crowded Thomas Friedman
Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam by Gordon M. Goldstein
Lush Life by Richard Prince
Plainsong by Kent Haruf
The Way Home by George Pelecanos
What Is the What by Dave Eggers
Netherland by Joseph O’Neill
2008
Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet by Jeffrey D. Sachs
Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer by Fred Kaplan
Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope by Jonathan Alter
FDR by Jean Edward Smith
Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll
Collected Poems, 1948 to 1984 by Derek Walcott
Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age by Larry Bartels
The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria
Special thanks to Myra R-L for her help!
2016
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
2015
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
The Whites by Richard Price
Purity by Jonathan Franzen
The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin
The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
2014
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
The Laughing Monsters by Denis Johnson
Nora Webster by Colm Toibin
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End Atul Gawande
Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos
2013
Reading list not disclosed
2012
Reading list not disclosed
2011
The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do Daniel Woodrell
Rodin’s Debutante Ward Just
Cutting for Stone Abraham Verghese
To the End of the Land David Grossman
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
2010
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
Tinkers by Paul Harding
A Few Corrections by Brad Leithauser
President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime by Lou Cannon
2009
John Adams David McCullough
Hot, Flat and Crowded Thomas Friedman
Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam by Gordon M. Goldstein
Lush Life by Richard Prince
Plainsong by Kent Haruf
The Way Home by George Pelecanos
What Is the What by Dave Eggers
Netherland by Joseph O’Neill
2008
Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet by Jeffrey D. Sachs
Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer by Fred Kaplan
Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope by Jonathan Alter
FDR by Jean Edward Smith
Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll
Collected Poems, 1948 to 1984 by Derek Walcott
Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age by Larry Bartels
The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria
Special thanks to Myra R-L for her help!