All of Barack Obama’s summer reading lists, combined
Another summer, another list of summer reads from Barack Obama.
The 44th US president recommended dozens of books during his two terms, but Obama only started sharing summer reading lists—often alongside his annual Martha’s Vineyard vacation—in 2009. The latest list was released Thursday on Instagram.
In honor of nearly a decade of spectacular book recommendations, we’re looking back at all of Obama’s summer-reading recommendations. Even though it’s already August, the former president’s idea of a “light read”—The Sixth Extinction?—is one that works in any season.
- The Way Home, by George Pelecanos
- Hot, Flat, and Crowded, by Tom Friedman
- Lush Life, by Richard Price
- Plainsong, by Kent Haruf
- John Adams, by David McCullough
- Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen
- Tinkers, by Paul Harding
- A Few Corrections, by Brad Leithauser
- The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson
- Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese
- Rodin’s Debutante, by Ward Just
- To the End of the Land, by David Grossman
- The Bayou Trilogy, by Daniel Woodrell
2012 – A busy year—reading list not disclosed.
2013 – Another busy year! No time for books.
- 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, by Atul Gawande
- Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China, by Evan Osnos
- The Sixth Extinction, by Elizabeth Kolber
- Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- All That Is, by James Salter
- The Lowland, by Jhumpa Lahiri
- All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr
- Washington: A Life, by Ron Chernow
- Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, by William Finnegan
- H Is for Hawk, by Helen Macdonald
- The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins
- Seveneves , by Neal Stephenson
- The Underground Railroad , by Colson Whitehead
- The Power, by Naomi Alderman
- Grant, by Ron Chernow
- Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond
- Janesville: An American Story, by Amy Goldstein
- Exit West, by Mohsin Hamid
- Five-Carat Soul, by James McBride
- Anything Is Possible, by Elizabeth Strout
- Dying: A Memoir, by Cory Taylor
- A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles
- Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward
- Coach Wooden and Me, by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
- Basketball (and Other Things), by Shea Serrano
- Educated, by Tara Westover
- Warlight, by Michael Ondaatje
- A House for Mr. Biswas, by V.S. Naipaul
- An American Marriage, by Tayari Jones
- Factfulness, by Hans Rosling
2019
- The collected works of Toni Morrison
- The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead
- Exhalation, by Ted Chiang
- Wolf Hall, by Hillary Mantel
- Men Without Women, by Haruki Murakami
- American Spy, by Lauren Wilkinson
- The Shallows, by Nicholas Carr
- Lab Girl, by Hope Jahren
- Inland, by Téa Obreht
- How to Read the Air, by Dinaw Mengestu
- Maid, by Stephanie Land