Barack Obama's Reading List

Barack Obama's annual reading recommendations.

  1. Kin — Tayari Jones #1
  2. The Things We Never Say — Elizabeth Strout #2
  3. A World Appears — Michael Pollan #3
  4. Whistler — Ann Patchett #4
  5. This Land Is Your Land — Beverly Gage #5
  6. Vigil — George Saunders #6
  7. Seek Immediate Shelter — Vincent Yu #7
  8. Transcription — Ben Lerner #8
  9. Cool Machine — Colson Whitehead #9
  10. One Sun Only — Camille Bordas #10
  11. Data Empire — Roopika Risam #11
  12. Mark Twain — Ron Chernow #12
  13. The Book of Records — Madeleine Thien #13
  14. King of Ashes — S. A. Cosby #14
  15. Abundance — Ezra Klein #15
  16. Rosarita — Anita Desai #16
  17. Audition — Katie M. Kitamura #17
  18. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter — Stephen Graham Jones #18
  19. A Marriage at Sea — Sophie Elmhirst #19
  20. Paper Girl — Beth Macy #20
  21. Flashlight — Susan Choi #21
  22. We the People — Jill Lepore #22
  23. The Wilderness — Angela Flournoy #23
  24. 1929 — Andrew Ross Sorkin #24
  25. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny — Kiran Desai #25
  26. What We Can Know — Ian McEwan #26
  27. The Look — Michelle Obama #27
  28. There Is No Place for Us — Brian Goldstone #28
  29. Who is Government? — Michael Lewis #29
  30. Dead and Alive — Zadie Smith #30
  31. North Sun, or The Voyage of the Whaleship Esther — Ethan Rutherford #31
  32. The Sirens' Call — Christopher L. Hayes #32
  33. Intermezzo — Sally Rooney #33
  34. Orbital — Samantha Harvey #34
  35. Reading Genesis — Marilynne Robinson #35
  36. The Ministry of Time — Kaliane Bradley #36
  37. Hamish Hamilton Beautiful Days. — Zach Williams #37
  38. Growth — Daniel Susskind #38
  39. Headshot — Rita Bullwinkel #39
  40. In Ascension — Martin MacInnes #40
  41. Someone Like Us — Dinaw Mengestu #41
  42. The Anthropologists — Aysegül Savas #42
  43. Birnam Wood — Eleanor Catton #43
  44. Small Mercies — Dennis Lehane #44
  45. The Wager — David Grann #45
  46. The Vaster Wilds — Lauren Groff #46
  47. All the Sinners Bleed — S. A. Cosby #47
  48. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store — James McBride #48
  49. Poverty, by America — Matthew Desmond #49
  50. Blue Hour — Tiffany Clarke Harrison #50
  51. How to Say Babylon — Safiya Sinclair #51
  52. The Maniac — Benjamín Labatut #52
  53. Black Cake — Charmaine Wilkerson #53
  54. Ducks — Kate Beaton #54
  55. The Light We Carry — Michelle Obama #55
  56. To Paradise — Hanya Yanagihara #56
  57. Velvet Was the Night — Silvia Moreno-Garcia #57
  58. Why We're Polarized — Ezra Klein #58
  59. Liberation Day — George Saunders #59
  60. Razorblade Tears — S. A. Cosby #60
  61. The Candy House — Jennifer Egan #61
  62. Sea of Tranquility — Emily St. John Mandel #62
  63. Afterlives — Abdulrazak Gurnah #63
  64. Mouth to Mouth — Antoine Wilson #64
  65. The School for Good Mothers — Jessamine Chan #65
  66. Silverview — John le Carré #66
  67. Trust — Hernán Díaz #67
  68. Cloud Cuckoo Land — Anthony Doerr #68
  69. Crying in H Mart — Michelle Zauner #69
  70. Empire of Pain — Patrick Radden Keefe #70
  71. Harlem Shuffle — Colson Whitehead #71
  72. Klara and the Sun — Kazuo Ishiguro #72
  73. Leave the World Behind — Rumaan Alam #73
  74. Project Hail Mary — Andy Weir #74
  75. The Lincoln Highway — Amor Towles #75
  76. Under a White Sky — Elizabeth Kolbert #76
  77. These Precious Days — Ann Patchett #77
  78. Crossroads — Jonathan Franzen #78
  79. Beautiful Country — Qian Julie Wang #79
  80. Matrix — Lauren Groff #80
  81. At Night All Blood Is Black — David Diop #81
  82. Land of Big Numbers — Te-Ping Chen #82
  83. Things We Lost to the Water — Eric Nguyen #83
  84. Aftershocks — Nadia Owusu #84
  85. When We Cease to Understand the World — Benjamín Labatut #85
  86. Jack — Marilynne Robinson #86
  87. Luster — Raven Leilani #87
  88. The Undocumented Americans — Karla Cornejo Villavicencio #88
  89. The Vanishing Half — Brit Bennett #89
  90. Twilight of Democracy — Anne Applebaum #90
  91. Memorial Drive — Natasha Trethewey #91
  92. Hidden Valley Road — Robert Kolker #92
  93. Deacon King Kong — James McBride #93
  94. The Glass Hotel — Emily St. John Mandel #94
  95. The Splendid and the Vile — Erik Larson #95
  96. The ministry for the future — Kim Stanley Robinson #96
  97. How Much of These Hills is Gold — C Pam Zhang #97
  98. Homeland Elegies — Ayad Akhtar #98
  99. Missionaries — Phil Klay #99
  100. Sharks in the Time of Saviors — Kawai Strong Washburn #100
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