What books are on the PM’s bookshelves?
OTTAWA — What does a book on traffic, a biography of Abraham Lincoln, an anthology of English literature and the Holy Bible have in common?
Little, if anything, except that they’re all sitting on the shelves of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s private library.
Earlier this week, nearly 300 MPs participated in the first ever session of Canada’s virtual parliament. Because parliamentarians are working away from the House of Commons during the COVID-19 pandemic, Canadians got a glimpse into many federal politicians’ homes through the eye of their webcam on Wednesday.
Amongst the most noteworthy scenes were Minister Navdeep Bains’ colourful backdrop of a painting of men in turbans, a bottle of WD-40 lubricant sitting next to Conservative MP Marty Morantz and NDP MP Daniel Blaikie’s use of a white bed sheet to cover renovations happening behind him.
Viewers also got a (pixelated) look inside Trudeau’s office at Rideau Cottage, and more specifically, two of his private bookshelves. On them are roughly 100 books, family pictures and what seems to be a miniature replica of the Queen Elizabeth II Equestrian Monument that normally sits on Parliament Hill.
Curious to know what books have piqued Trudeau’s interest enough to make it to his private shelves and possibly influence his thinking, the National Post reached out to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) to receive a high quality picture of the two bookshelves.
The PMO refused, so this reporter turned to sleuths on Twitter, who helped identify roughly 20 of the works featured behind Trudeau during his (again, rather pixelated) appearance in virtual question period. The National Post submitted this list to the PMO for confirmation, but they did not respond.
Unsurprisingly, the collection features a variety of books on politics, leadership and elections.
Two of them are by acclaimed presidential biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin: “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln” and “Leadership: In Turbulent Times”. (The latter seems particularly à propos lately, as Trudeau must lead Canada through the unprecedented crisis that is the COVID-19 pandemic.)
Another political book on his shelf, John Duffy’s “Fights of Our Lives: Elections, Leadership and the Making of Canada”, “tries to resuscitate the idea — long dormant if not dead in Canadian media and academic circles — that elections matter,” according the publisher’s notes.
The prime minister may have been partly raised and elected in Quebec, but that didn’t mean he didn’t need a copy of columnist Chantal Hébert’s book “French Kiss: Stephen Harper’s Blind Date with Quebec” to better understand the Canada-Quebec political dynamic.
Trudeau’s father, who ruled the country for more than 15 years between 1968 and 1984, is also never far from the current PM. A copy of his biography by John English, “Citizen of the World: the Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau”, sits front and centre on one of shelves.
A series of literary collections also sit on his office shelves, probably a remnant of his studies at McGill University back in the early 1990s.
Amongst the easily recognizable works are volumes 1 and 2 of the “Norton Anthology of English Literature”, “Poetry in English: An anthology” by Macha Louis Rosenthal and “The Riverside Chaucer”, a collection of poems by English poet Geoffrey Chaucer.
The prime minister also seems interested in the lives of writers and businessmen, particularly Tesla founder Elon Musk (“Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future” by Ashlee Vance), Apple cofounder Steve Jobs (“Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson) and famous author James Joyce (“James Joyce” by Richard Ellmann).
And what is a book collection without a little bit of self-help and inspiration? Thus, the presence of TV star and former Mythbuster Adam Savage’s “Every Tool’s a Hammer: Life is What You Make It.”
“This book is meant to be a toolbox of problem solving, complete with a shop’s worth of notes on the tools, techniques, and materials that I use most often,” the author describes on the book’s website.
Amongst the advice and reminders in the book: “Don’t wait until everything is perfect to begin a project,” and
“making is messy and filled with screw-ups, but that’s OK.”
According to one reporter on Twitter, the prime minister was reading this book on the campaign trail last fall.
The presence of some other books came as a surprise to Twitter denizens, but none as much as the bright yellow dust jacket of “Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do” by Tom Vanderbilt.
The book “explains why traffic jams form, outlines the unintended consequences of our attempts to engineer safety and even identifies the most common mistakes drivers make in parking lots,” according to the publisher’s notes. “Traffic gets under the hood of the quotidian activity of driving to uncover the surprisingly complex web of physical, psychological and technical factors that explain how traffic works.”
And then, at the bottom of one of the shelves, a book instantly recognized by many Twitter users — the Holy Bible.