Barack Obama’s reading list

A reading list that will inspire you to think differently

The former POTUS has shared hundreds of his favourite books over the last decade. Following the release of his latest reading list, Penguin.co.uk compiled a list of his favourites:

Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin (2005)

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.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (2021)

Featuring 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 sole 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.

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo (2019)

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.

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (1963)

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. 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.

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (2016)

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.