Get Ready to Carve Out 89 Hours for President Obama's Essential Reads
The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln
Yeah, Abe authored the Gettysburg Address—but he also wrote plenty beyond his speeches, including personal letters, pardons, and orders for war supplies. If you’re a fan of one of the 21st-century's best orators, spend some time with the great words of his predecessor.
Total reading time: 18 hours
How to read it: Aloud, on a cross-country road trip to visit the great American monuments
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63, Taylor Branch
In the first of his Pulitzer Prize-winning trilogy, Taylor Branch covers the early years of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s entry into the political fray and the civil rights movement, including the Montgomery bus boycott, the 1961 Freedom Rides, the 1963 March on Washington, and the Kennedy brothers vs. J. Edgar Hoover. Required reading for understanding an era shaping how all Americans have grown up in the past half-century.
Total reading time: 15.5 hours
How to read it: Start on the third Monday in January
*The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, *Robert A. Caro
Modern New York City was largely shaped by one man: Robert Moses. Power Broker is the definitive biography of Moses, who dictated much of the structure of the city, creating $27 billion in public works projects, persuading the UN to build headquarters in Manhattan, and investing in highways instead of public transit. For better or for worse—many point to his work as cause for urban decline in the late 20th century—he's one of the greats of American industry.
Total reading time: 19 hours
How to read it: During your commute, experiencing rage at public transit
The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
The Fire Next Time comprises two essays by James Baldwin: “Down At The Cross,” which addresses his experiences with the Christian church as a young man, and “My Dungeon Shook,” a letter to Baldwin’s 14-year-old nephew. Paid homage in form by Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, “My Dungeon Shook” addresses racial tensions and inequalities in the early 1960s from Baldwin’s personal experiences.
Total reading time: 2 hours
How to read it: When you have a full afternoon to absorb masterful prose about the history of racial inequality in America
Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American, Richard S. Tedlow
Andy Grove, born in Hungary in 1936, survived the Holocaust and the Soviet invasion to guide Intel through years of huge growth. In The Life and Times, Harvard Business School's Richard S. Tedlow writes the ultimate biography of Grove, from his childhood in Budapest to his relationships with the founders of Intel to how he dealt with the Pentium computer bug in 1994. This is the story of one of the 21st century’s greatest capitalists, and an early hero of Silicon Valley.
Total reading time: 8 hours
How to read it: In a Bay Area coffee shop full of coding millennials
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari
In Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari writes about disruptors of a different sort. Long before computer chips, our homo sapiens ancestors experienced a cognitive revolution, expanding and colonizing across the world. Harari tracks the significant moments of change, from revolutions scientific and industrial to our modern experiments with bioengineering, which may signify the end of homo sapiens as we’ve existed for 150,000 years. A must-read for any human—or aspiring bot.
Total reading time: 6.5 hours
How to read it: As a pick-me-up when you need to feel a little species pride
Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
Homo sapiens may have been around for a long time, but in Thinking, Fast and Slow, psychologist Daniel Kahneman debunks the myth of homo economicus. As anyone who has ever gone grocery shopping hungry knows, human beings are irrational creatures. Kahneman recounts his career studying cognitive biases, prospect theory (for which Kahneman won the Nobel in economic science), and hedonic psychology.
Total reading time: 7 hours
How to read it: Before your irrational self takes control and decides to just watch Netflix instead
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Elizabeth Kolbert
Within this century, man-made climate change may eliminate half of all living species on Earth. Elizabeth Kolbert examines the sixth mass extinction from the front lines: the Amazonian rainforest, the Great Barrier Reef, the Arctic ice cap. It’s a sobering read about the magnitude of our impact—and the catastrophic consequences that we, unlike the asteroid that caused the last mass extinction (of the dinosaurs), have the ability to alter.
Total reading time: 5 hours
How to read it: Before heading to a dinner party where you explain why you bike to work now
In Dubious Battle, John Steinbeck
Young Jim Nolan finds his purpose in “the Party,” helping to organize a strike of fruit pickers in California. In Dubious Battle offers Steinbeck’s signature lyrical prose on early 20th century daily life in a novel beyond the big ones you already read in high school.
Total reading time: 4 hours
How to read it: While traveling across the US for the holidays, preferably on a boxcar from San Francisco to Salinas
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, Katherine Boo
With her precise descriptions of relationships and the tragic lives of her characters, Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers reads like expertly crafted fiction. Instead, Boo meticulously reports the lives of a family in Annawadi, a Mumbai slum, focusing on Abdul, a boy who supports his family as a garbage trader, until he’s wrongfully arrested for murder. Boo spent three years researching her story, and it shows.
Total reading time: 4 hours
How to read it: When you want to escape family holidays with some well-told nonfiction
