August 13, 2024, 10:17am

Is Barack Obama the best-read President to ever hold the title of commander-in-chief? Signs point to probably. A week before his party formally convenes in Chicago to elect nominees—and conspicuously, five weeks before the proper end-of-summer—the people’s overachiever has published his annual summer reading list.

Via presidential Insta. I want a president who’s a bibliophile.

In keeping with the man’s capacious habits, there’s a lot of genre diversity on this year’s list. Obama’s apparently enjoyed novels (Adelle Waldman’s Help Wanted, Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time), pop history (John Ganz’s When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s), and hybrid memoir (Hanif Abdurraqib’s There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension).

And while the emphasis is on new releases, the inclusion of Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis certainly underscores a fascination with antiquity.

Obama’s published his annual favorites list since achieving office. And by my lights, he is the first president to emphasize pleasure reading in this fashion. Back in 2017, Bill Clinton once dropped some random recommendations. His pop-history-heavy list included credible Dad books, like David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon, and Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton: A Global History.

I also assume F.D.R. was a reader, just based on his fireside chats. And the thoughtful team behind the Broadway show Oh, Mary! have recently uncovered the late Abraham Lincoln’s favorite books.

But Obama may be the reigning biblio-king.

It’s bothered me for years that a president could maintain such a robust habit while holding down a rigorous full-time job. In 2015, when he was very much still in office, Obama squeezed a dozen doorstops around bilateral meetings and bill drafting. That same year, I read way fewer pages. And blamed a low creative output on my part-time bartending job.

But I guess we can’t all be winners.