By now, it should be pretty obvious that Barack Obama is a huge reader. Once or twice a year, the former President of the United States releases lists of his favourite books that inspire us to add to our own to-read pile.
His recommendations range from novels of all styles to essay collections, non-fiction tackling the biggest issues of our times to biographies and much more.
As Obama himself said in July, “there's nothing quite like sitting down with a great book in the summer.” Following the release of his latest reading list, we've rounded up our picks of his favourite reads from 2021 and years past.
During his first presidential run, Barack Obama was asked which one book he would take with him to the White House. His answer: Team of Rivals .
Doris Kearns Goodwin’s landmark work is a fascinating study of how Abraham Lincoln’s decision to assemble a cabinet that included his political rivals shaped one of the most significant periods in the United States.
Speaking to a journalist in 2008, the then-Senator Obama called it a “remarkable study in leadership ”, so perhaps it’s no surprise he took Lincoln’s experiences to heart when assembling his own cabinet.
Seen on the former President's summer 2021 reading list, Andy Weir's latest interstellar adventure has also been described as his best yet.
At the start of the story we meet one Ryland Grace: the only survivor of a desperate mission to save the world. The only problem, however, is that he's waking up with no memory of who he is, where he is, and what he's meant to be doing.
With his cremates dead, time closing in on humanity's end and seemingly no one else around to help, is he – and the rest of the world – going to survive?
Bernardine Evaristo has been writing critically-acclaimed, award-winning books for over two decades and her 2019 Booker Prize win rightfully catapulted her writing to a whole new readership.
Showing the beauty in difference and the multiplicity that holds a single identity together, Girl, Woman, Other weaves together an extraordinary tapestry of twelve interconnected Black lives in present-day Britain.
Rounding off 2019 with his list of his latest favourite reads, Obama named Girl, Woman, Other as one of the books that made the year “a little brighter for [him]”.
In the wake of the killing of George Floyd, the former president turned to James Baldwin’s always-timely words to “understand the pain and anger behind the protests” that followed.
Speaking about The Fire Next Time , Obama said, “It’s frightening how James Baldwin can lay out a reality 50 years ago that sounds like it was written yesterday.”
A seminal work on racial injustice, this book contains two intensely personal essays – one in the form of a letter to Baldwin's teenage nephew, written on the centenary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the other an exploration of his early life in Harlem and the intersection of race and religion.
1922, Moscow: a Bolshevik tribunal brands Count Alexander Rostov an unrepentant aristocrat and sentences him to indefinite house arrest.
To add insult to injury, he can't enjoy the luxurious comfort to which he’s accustomed and is instead confined to a small attic room in the Hotel Metropolis while, outside the building, Russia goes through some of its most dramatic changes.
Not long before A Gentleman in Moscow made an appearance on Obama’s 2017 end of year round-up, it was also announced that the book will be adapted into a television series starring Kenneth Branagh.
Obama started his summer 2021 reading list by saying, “Whether you're camped out on the beach or curled up on the couch on a rainy day, there's nothing quite like sitting down with a great book in the summer,” and ain't that the truth?
Intimacies follows an interpreter who has left New York for the Netherlands, searching for a new life and a place to call home. Before long, she finds herself drawn into a series of tense personal dramas and caught between many truths.
Pushed to the brink and standing in the middle of betrayal and heartbreak, she's forced to decide what she really wants from life. This is a simmering existential thriller on the meaning of power and morality.
Between 1915 and 1970 almost six million Black citizens left the southern States in search of a better life in the north and west of the country.
In her definitive account of this period, Isabel Wilkerson meticulously chronicles stories of exhausting cross-country journeys and the hope of starting over.
When awarding her the National Humanities Medal in 2016, Obama said: “More than 1,200 people told [Isabel] their families' stories of heartbreak and endurance and ultimately overcoming – stories they often found too painful to share even with their own children. And through it all, she had to conquer the enormity of her task and prove wrong the doubts of others. And because she did, one of the most important chapters in our history is told in a book any young person can pick up and read.”
Saeed and Nadia are young adults living in an unnamed city in the midst of a war. As daily life becomes particularly dangerous, the pair hear rumours about mysterious doors appearing in the city and are surprised to discover the truth.
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2017, Mohsin Hamid’s novel is a short but deeply-affecting story. Its commentary on migration feels particularly relevant in our present but reading this book also feels like reading a beautifully-written, timeless fable.
After its release the film rights were snapped up by producer/director duo the Russo Brothers, with the Obamas on board as producers and Riz Ahmed set to star as Saeed.
In this National Book Award-winner, Ibram X. Kendi explores the entire history of racist ideas, from 15th century Europe to present-day USA, and their power to shape the course of history.
Somehwat surprisingly, Kendi reveals, racist ideas didn't come from ignorance or hatred but were devised by some of the world's greatest thinkers to justify or reinforce existing discrepancies in many areas of life.
Writing during last year’s Black History Month, Obama shared a non-fiction reading list to “help to provide some essential context about the challenges that many people of color face every day… [these works can] be fuel on our journey toward a more fair and just future for all of our sons and daughters”.
In 2015 and, it seemed, for several years after, The Girl on the Train was the one book everyone was talking about.
Not since Gone Girl , released three years prior, had a book created so much conversation but Paula Hawkins’ debut novel certainly captured the attention of readers worldwide.
The story follows Rachel: still reeling from the end of her marriage, her daily commute through suburban neighbourhoods offers her the chance to lose herself in the more picturesque lives of others – until, one day, she sees something almost unbelievable.
Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark (2017)
With many of us now au fait with using voice assistants like Siri, owning home devices such as ‘smart’ speakers or thermostats or just tuning into something that Netflix has recommended you watch next, it's not hard to see how artificial intelligence already plays a huge part in our daily lives.
In this eye-opening read, which featured on Obama’s 2017 reading list alongside A Gentleman in Moscow , MIT professor Max Tegmark explores into the many ways AI might affect our lives in the next era of civilization – a truly technological age – while ensuring it remains beneficial to humanity.
Topping Obama's 2017 reading list, The Power imagines a world where young women develop the ability to electrocute men at will.
With their newfound power, the women in this world start to lose their fear. The fear of walking home alone at night, of wondering whether they were “asking for it”, of harassment and oppression in its myriad forms. And with the loss of that fear, the begin to remake the world in their image.
In the same way Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale remains as relevant now as when it was first written, The Power will remain an essential feminist classic for years to come.
Chosen by both Barack Obama and Bill Gates as a summer 2021 must-read, Elizabeth Kolbert's latest book asks the question: despite our transformative impact on the environment, can we save nature in time?
Taking a unflinching look at the new world we're creating, Kolbert speaks to the biologists trying to preserve rare species, engineers attempting to turn carbon emissions to stone, researcheres attempting to develop a new type of coral that can survive hotter water temperatures and many more of the people trying to protect nature in the world we find ourselves in. Under a White Sky is as inspiring as it is nerve-wracking, and an unexpectedly darkly comic investigation of the conservation challenges we're facing.
Image: Ryan MacEachern / Penguin
