What Obama’s Been Reading Since Leaving Office

Another of Obama’s 2022 summer favorites, family dysfunction abounds in this reboot of Dostoyevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov” set among a Chinese American immigrant family. Between a reimagined murder trial (an update of the original) and real-life examples of anti-immigrant sentiment, Chao breathes new life into the classic immigrant tale and creates a story that reads like “Succession” if it were set in a Chinese restaurant in Wisconsin.

Cosby follows up his cinematic “Blacktop Wasteland” with an equally thrilling crime novel with a killer narrator and a propulsive plot. Putting aside their prejudices and homophobia, two ex-con dads, one Black and one white, join forces, hell-bent on revenging the brutal murder of their sons, who were married. Kirkus calls it, “Fast on its feet, by turns lethal and tender,” we call it a rip-roaring ride, and Obama calls it one of his favorites of 2022.

A famous writer once told Patchett that having children was a prerequisite to learning about love and being a great writer. In this collection of personal essays, childless Patchett — one of the greatest contemporary authors — expounds upon many of the relationships that have made her life enviably fulfilling.

Winner of the 2021 International Booker Prize, this slim novel’s dark themes pack an emotional punch while shining a light on overlooked World War I history. Tormented by his failure to save his friend on the battlefield, a Senegalese soldier fighting for the French army descends into the hell of war.

It’s hard to find a more relevant book during a summer of raging wildfires, historic droughts, and catastrophic flooding. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Kolbert tackles the urgent issue of finding ways to reverse human-caused environmental damage. She investigates possible solutions born of the very human ingenuity that got us into trouble in the first place. Could these innovations avert disastrous climate change? Or will they dig us into a deeper hole?

A simple premise belies the provocative racial themes that unfold in this slow-burn thriller nominated for the National Book Award in Fiction. A white Brooklyn family rents a luxurious house in the Hamptons for a week-long getaway, but they’re barely settled in when there’s a late night knock at the door. It’s an older Black couple claiming to be the owners who rented the house out, but they’re back due to a severe power outage in the city. With no internet or cell phone access in this remote area, it’s difficult to verify the truth. The tension keeps ratcheting up until the pulse-pounding ending. Netflix has already scooped up the movie rights, with Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali set to star.

Obama recommended “The Overstory” on a June 2021 episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” podcast. It won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and according to Obama, “it changed how I thought about the Earth and our place in it.”

Critics across the board have been raving about this memoir from Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Trethewey. The author addresses essential topics — including domestic violence and racism — as she confronts her mother's horrifying murder at the hands of her stepfather. Obama says “it’s a meditation on race, and class, and grief. Uplifting, surprisingly, at the end of it. But just wrenching.”

Sharing his favorite books of 2020 on Instagram, Obama gave a shout out to Leilani’s electrifying debut novel. When a Black artist in her 20s starts dating a white man in an open relationship, her life quickly becomes tangled up in his family’s drama.

Obama’s a fan of Pulitzer Prize winner Robinson’s “Gilead” novels and recommended the series’ fourth book. It’s the moving story of star-crossed lovers set in a segregated, post-WWII America that deemed their love illegal and dangerous. When Jack, a white prodigal son of a preacher, falls for Della, an upstanding Black teacher, their bond proves that love conquers all — but at a price.

“You’ll get a better sense of the complexity and redemption within the American immigrant story with Mengestu’s novel,” Obama wrote in his 2019 Facebook post.

In 2019, as part of his My Brother’s Keeper initiative, Obama recommended the next four nonfiction books “to provide some essential context about the challenges that many people of color face every day.” In this riveting history, Pulitzer Prize winner Wilkerson (“Caste”) brings to life the previously overlooked story of the Great Migration, when millions of African Americans uprooted their lives to move from the South to cities across the U.S. from 1915–1970.

In this National Book Award winner, Kendi traces the history of racist ideas in America, specifically through the three concepts of segregation, assimilation, and antiracism. He contextualizes recent events, including the tragic killing of Black men and women and urgent calls for racial justice. Powerful, eye-opening, and deeply researched, this chronicle of the seeds and spread of prejudice is a necessary read.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous quote is as relevant today as it was when he wrote his 1963 letter defending the use of civil disobedience in the fight to end segregation. Listen to King’s seminal letter and let his words be, as Obama writes, “fuel on our journey toward a more fair and just future for all of our sons and daughters.”

Jones’ explosive bestseller won the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction. It also won praise from Obama, who included it in his summer reading recommendations in 2018. He wrote in his August Facebook post that it’s “a moving portrayal of the effects of a wrongful conviction on a young African American couple.”

In his August 2018 summer reading list on Facebook, Obama wrote, “With the recent passing of V.S. Naipaul, I reread ‘A House for Mr Biswas,’ the Nobel Prize winner's first great novel about growing up in Trinidad and the challenge of post-colonial identity.”

Acclaim grew for Rosling’s book as the war on facts has continued to heat up over the past few years. Obama described “Factfulness” as “a hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases” in his August 2018 Facebook post.

Visiting Africa in 2018, the former president shared his reading recommendations, which included some of “Africa’s best writers and thinkers.” Obama suggested “A Grain of Wheat,” describing the novel in his Facebook post as: “A chronicle of the events leading up to Kenya’s independence, and a compelling story of how the transformative events of history weigh on individual lives and relationships.”

In a 2017 Facebook post listing the best books he read during his first year out of office, Obama recommended Taylor’s poignant memoir about coming to terms with her terminal cancer diagnosis. Her experiences offer readers a moving example of how to approach the inevitable, and a way to embrace life even in the face of death.

Like many others in 2017, Obama spent time reading stories about working class America. By now everybody’s heard of “Hillbilly Elegy,” but “Janesville” is equally important (and less controversial) to understanding how the US got into this frayed and tattered state. This moving award-winner made it onto Obama’s top reads of 2017.

Obama added Serrano’s work to his 2017 list as a “bonus for hoops fans.” Anyone who likes to dream in sports hypotheticals and what-ifs while swimming in an endless sea of stats needs to read this book. Alternatively, you can read it if you just like basketball and want a good laugh.