2019 Recommendation

Lot: Stories by Bryan Washington
Normal People by Sally Rooney
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
Solitary by Albert Woodfox
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff
Between the World and Me by ​​Ta-Nehisi Coates
Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by ​Doris Kearns Goodwin
Washington: A Life​by Doris Kearns Goodwin
The Power by Naomi Alderman
Factfulness by Hans Rosling
Educated by Tara Westover​
Warlight by Michael Ondaatje
A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones​
Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden by Steve Coll
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois​
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
Exhalation by Ted Chiang
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu
Maid by Stephanie Land
Working by Studs Terkel
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by ​ Dr Atul Gawande
Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet by ​Jeffrey D Sachs
Fates and Furies by Lauren Goff
Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos
Lincoln’s Selected Writings by  Abraham Lincoln
John Adams by David McCullough​
FDR by Jean Edward Smith
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris​
Inland by Téa Obreht
Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami
American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson
The Shallows by Nicholas Carr
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
Janesville: An American Story by Amy Goldstein
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Invisible Man ​by Ralph Ellison
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Grant by Ron Chernow
Harry Potter series by J K Rowling
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by ​William Finnegan​
All the King’s Men by ​Robert Penn Warren
Lessons in Disaster by ​Gordon Goldstein
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald​
Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Philosophy & Literature by Peter S Thompson​
​Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

2018

  1. A Grain of Wheat by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
  2. A House for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipaul
  3. American Prison by Shane Bauer
  4. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  5. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
  6. Arthur Ashe: A Life by Raymond Arsenault
  7. Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
  8. Educated by Tara Westover
  9. Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling
  10. Feel Free by Zadie Smith
  11. Florida by Lauren Groff
  12. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight
  13. Futureface: A Family Mystery, an Epic Quest, and the Secret to Belonging by Alex Wagner
  14. How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
  15. Immigrant, Montana by Amitava Kumar
  16. In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History by Mitch Landrieu
  17. Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark
  18. Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
  19. The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die by Keith Payne
  20. The Largesse of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson
  21. The New Geography of Jobs by Enrico Moretti
  22. The Return by Hisham Matar
  23. The World As It Is by Ben Rhodes
  24. There, There by Tommy Orange
  25. Things Fall Apart by China Achebe
  26. Warlight by Michael Ondaatje
  27. Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
  28. Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deneen

Michiko Kakutani NYT Interview ​Jan 16, 2017

  1. A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul
  2. Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
  3. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
  4. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
  5. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  6. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
  7. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
  8. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
  9. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
  10. The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

2017

  1. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
  2. Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
  3. Basketball (and Other Things): A Collection of Questions Asked, Answered, Illustrated by Shea Serrano
  4. Coach Wooden and Me by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
  5. Dying: A Memoir by Cory Taylor
  6. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
  7. Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
  8. Five-Carat Soul by James McBride
  9. Grant by Ron Chernow
  10. Janesville: An American Story by Amy Goldstein
  11. Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
  12. The Power by Naomi Alderman

SUMMER LIST 2016

  1. Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan
  2. H Is For Hawk by Helen Macdonald
  3. Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
  4. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
  5. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

2015

  1. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
  2. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  3. Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
  4. Purity by Jonathan Franzen
  5. The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
  6. The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
  7. The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
  8. The Whites by Richard Price
  9. The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
  10. Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow

BOOKSTORE TRIP NOVEMBER 29, 2014

  1. A Barnyard Collection: Click, Clack, Moo and More by Doreen Cronin
  2. Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos
  3. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
  4. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande
  5. Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
  6. Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms by Katherine Rundell
  7. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
  8. I Spy Sticker Book and Picture Riddles by Jean Marzollo
  9. Junie B. Jones and a Little Monkey Business by Barbara Park
  10. Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus by Barbara Park
  11. Mattimeo by Brian Jacques
  12. Mossflower by Brian Jacques
  13. Nora Webster by Colm Toibin
  14. Nuts to You by Lynn Rae Perkins
  15. Redwall by Brian Jacques
  16. The Laughing Monsters by Denis Johnson
  17. The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

2014

  1. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
  2. Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos
  3. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande
  4. Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín
  5. The Laughing Monsters by Denis Johnson
  6. The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

2011

  1. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
  2. Rodin’s Debutante by Ward Just
  3. The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do by Daniel Woodrell
  4. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
  5. To the End of the Land by David Grossman

2010

  1. A Few Corrections by Brad Leithauser
  2. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
  3. President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime by Lou Cannon
  4. Tinkers by Paul Harding

2009

  1. Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Friedman
  2. John Adams by David McCullough
  3. Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam by Gordon M. Goldstein
  4. Lush Life by Richard Price
  5. Netherland by Joseph O’Neill
  6. Plainsong by Kent Haruf
  7. The Way Home by George Pelecanos
  8. What Is the What by Dave Eggers

2008

  1. Collected Poems, 1948 to 1984 by Derek Walcott
  2. Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet by Jeffrey D. Sachs
  3. FDR by Jean Edward Smith
  4. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll
  5. Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer by Fred Kaplan
  6. The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope by Jonathan Alter
  7. Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age by Larry Bartels

Sources

Image Source: Obama White House Archives
Sources:kottke.org, The New York Times, The Telegraph, The independent, EW, QZ. Facebook
​https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/16/books/transcript-president-obama-on-what-books-mean-to-him.html
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/obama-buys-books-politics-prose
https://www.dclibrary.org/node/54563
https://ew.com/books/2017/01/18/barack-obama-book-recommendations/
72 books Barack Obama Recommended During His Presidency. Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician who served as the 44th President of the United States from 2009 to 2017. He is the first African American to have served as president.