Barack Obama has reached the stage of his administration when plans are being made for the construction in Chicago of the Presidential library that former American leaders get to set up in their memory. But, before that, he – or his aides – have also had to think about a smaller library: the shelf of books that the American people are told their leader plans to read on his summer vacation.



Although this duty reduced in intensity during the tenure of George W Bush, Obama is the most bookish of modern residents of the White House, unusual in having published before he reached Washington two bestselling memoirs – Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope – that were works of genuine literary merit, and which he wrote himself, rather than campaign autobiographies typed by advisers.

With some politicians, there might also be a suspicion that members of the entourage would choose – and even do – their holiday reading for them. But, while the half-dozen volumes being packed for Martha’s Vineyard clearly seem calculated to promote certain messages and values, these are certainly works that you could imagine President Obama having on his bedside table by choice.

Admittedly, the fact that the first two novels on the list both start with the first letter in the alphabet triggers suspicion that an assistant press secretary might have rattled through an Amazon list of current fiction. But a more significant link between All That Is by James Salter and All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr is that both concern the long consequences of the second world war, a conflict that, due to various 70th anniversaries, has taken on an unexpected significance during Obama’s second term. (British readers, who had never expected former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg to be mentioned in the same sentence as Obama, may be interested to know that, when I met the Liberal Democrat leader during the 2015 general election, his current reading was the Salter.)

The third novel – the list is exactly balanced between fiction and non-fiction – more directly echoes Obama’s own biography. Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland centers on emigration to America from a politically troubled culture on another continent, although Lahiri’s fictional clan come from India rather than Kenya and unlike the president (whatever some right-wing fanatics say) were not born in the USA.

In fiction, the striking absences are Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman – possibly because the president has already read the racially contentious companion novel to To Kill a Mockingbird, or because he doesn’t want to be seen reading it – and any crime or thriller titles, which have been the genres most favoured by previous recent occupants of the Oval Office. Bill Clinton helped to popularise the novels of Walter Mosley and was an admirer of PD James, while both Clinton and the first President Bush were declared fans of Richard North Patterson. Obama, though, prefers the sort of stories that please the judges of the fancier writing prizes: Doerr won the Pulitzer, Lahiri was a finalist for the National book award.

Whereas a politician might if necessary defend fictional preferences as relaxation or escapism, non-fiction titles really need to be politically on message. The revelation that monographs called Hollande: Saviour of France or Recession? What Recession? were in Obama’s suitcase would likely lead to impeachment and a Republican taking the oath of office in 2017.

The president’s trio of factual tomes, though, serves as perfect homework for his final 15 months in office. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, in which the African American author and educator writes a letter to his teenage son, directly addresses the issue of race in America which has defined the Obama presidency, first beneficially through the historic nature of his election and then malevolently in outbreaks of racist killing. And The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert telegraphs the president’s concern with climate change and resource scarcity and his desire to ensure, against the environmentalist’s direst predictions in her book, that there will be a world for his daughters and their children.

Falling alphabetically last is the riskiest choice on the list because it invites suggestions of vanity and self-aggrandisement. The reading matter that American presidents are most likely to be photographed with as they board Air Force One or Marine One has always been biographies of revered predecessors: Kennedy for Democrats, Reagan for Republicans, Lincoln or Washington for both. This is the literary equivalent of a selfie with a celebrity and, as he prepares to leave office, it is little surprise that the 44th President finds himself drawn to Ron Chernow’s biography of the first, Washington.

By telling his fellow Americans that he is spending his penultimate summer in office with that book, Obama might as well be saying: Mount Rushmore – now how about it?