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Barack Obama is that rare politician who is, first, a writer who reads — and who talks about fiction the way most public figures talk about strategy. Long before and long after the presidency he has published reading lists, and in a 2017 interview he explained what reading gave him in office: "the ability to slow down and get perspective, along with the ability to get in somebody else's shoes — those two things have been invaluable to me." For Obama the novel is not an escape from public life but a tool for it, a way of holding on to the complexity beneath the argument of the day.
His recommendations are unusually literary for a national leader. Toni Morrison is a durable influence — he has said Song of Solomon shaped "how to be and how to think" — and his admiration for Marilynne Robinson ran deep enough that he sat down to interview her about Gilead. Running beneath the whole list is a spine of African American literature and history, from The Warmth of Other Suns to Frederick Douglass, beside a working shelf of biography and history — Team of Rivals, Parting the Waters — that he reads as a guide to leadership and coalition. He reads globally too (Adichie, Hamid, Achebe) and keeps a curious eye on science and technology (Life 3.0). Since leaving office he has become a deliberate public curator, publishing annual favourites — his first, in 2017, was headlined by Naomi Alderman's speculative novel The Power — and continuing them well past 2019 into contemporary fiction, inequality, history and global affairs.
Read together, Barack Obama's recommendations make an argument about what reading is for. In his own account, fiction is an empathy engine: a way to "get in somebody else's shoes," to hear, as he put it, "the truths under the surface of what we argue about every day." That is the thread that makes a president's reading list look less like credentialing and more like a practice — one he has kept up in public for well over a decade.
Two writers form its conscience. Toni Morrison — Song of Solomon, which he called "not just pain, but … joy and glory and mystery" — and Marilynne Robinson, whose Gilead he loved enough to interview her about, stand for fiction as moral perspective. Around them runs the most personal thread in his reading: African American literature and history as a continuous line — The Warmth of Other Suns's Great Migration flowing into Between the World and Me's present-day reckoning and back to Frederick Douglass and the civil-rights history of Parting the Waters. A second, quieter thread is history and biography read as political instruction — Team of Rivals on coalition and leadership — and a third reaches outward to global and immigrant lives (Adichie, Hamid, Achebe) and to the near future (Life 3.0).
It is worth naming honestly what these post-presidency lists also are: a form of public cultural curation, released each summer and December, as much a considered gift to readers as a private confession of taste. That curation has only widened since 2019 — toward contemporary literary fiction, inequality and race (Caste, Poverty, by America), narrative history (The Wager, King: A Life) and technology (Chip War). What stays constant across the eras is the underlying conviction: that reading widely, and especially reading fiction, is how you keep hold of other people's humanity — including in a job where that is easy to lose.
Morrison teaches him how a novel can carry moral weight; Robinson deepens it into fiction as empathy — the reason he says reading let him "get in somebody else's shoes."
From the inner life of fiction he turns to how leaders actually govern — Goodwin on Lincoln, coalition and holding rivals together.
History then widens to the Great Migration that remade America — the sweep of Black life that governing a country has to reckon with.
And that history lands in the present: Coates carries the same story into a contemporary reckoning with race and democracy.
His most durable literary influence — Morrison as the moral centre of his reading, a book he says shaped how to be and how to think.
“Song of Solomon is a book I think of when I imagine people going through hardship. That it's not just pain, but there's joy and glory and mystery.”WebsiteSource: Barack Obama — interview with Michiko Kakutani (The New York Times)
He loved the novel enough to interview Robinson about it — fiction as moral perspective, the clearest statement of what reading gives him.
“One of my favorite characters in fiction is a pastor in Gilead, Iowa, named John Ames, who is gracious and courtly and a little bit confused about how to reconcile his faith with all the various travails that his family goes through.”WebsiteSource: President Obama & Marilynne Robinson: A Conversation in Iowa (New York Review of Books)
The Lincoln biography he has cited as a key influence on how to lead — govern by holding your rivals close.
WebsiteSource: Barack Obama's formative reading (The New York Times, 2009)
Branch’s civil-rights history among his formative reading — the movement whose story runs through his own political imagination.
WebsiteSource: Barack Obama's formative reading (The New York Times, 2009)
A formative classic he has named among the books that shaped him as a young reader and writer.
WebsiteSource: Barack Obama's formative reading (The New York Times, 2009)
Emerson’s essay among his formative reading — the American grammar of individual conscience and self-definition.
WebsiteSource: Barack Obama's formative reading (The New York Times, 2009)
A presidency-era pick and the keystone of his African American history reading — the Great Migration that remade the country.
WebsiteSource: Barack Obama — 2011 summer reading list (White House)
Coates’s letter to his son — the migration history of a century earlier carried into a present-day reckoning with race.
WebsiteSource: Barack Obama — 2015 summer reading list
Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning novel — one of two of his books Obama has recommended, and history reimagined as fiction.
BlogSource: Barack Obama — 2016 summer reading list (The President's Summer Reading List)
Blight’s definitive biography — the abolitionist whose life anchors the long arc of American freedom.
WebsiteSource: Barack Obama — favourite books of 2018
Adichie on race, love and belonging across Nigeria and America — his global-and-immigrant thread at its sharpest.
WebsiteSource: Barack Obama — 2018 summer reading list
On his 2018 summer list Obama praised it as a true classic of world literature that has inspired generations of writers across Africa and beyond.
WebsiteSource: Barack Obama — 2018 summer reading list
Mandela’s autobiography — a personal hero whose writings Obama has said he turned to for a sense of solidarity in hard times.
WebsiteSource: Barack Obama — 2018 summer reading list
Hamid’s spare novel of migration and love under collapse — the refugee experience rendered as intimate fiction.
WebsiteSource: Barack Obama — favourite books of 2017
A wry, humane novel of a life lived under house arrest — a rare pick he shares with Bill Gates.
WebsiteSource: Barack Obama — favourite books of 2017
Chernow’s vast biography — leadership and Reconstruction, and one of several Chernow histories Obama returns to.
WebsiteSource: Barack Obama — favourite books of 2017
Westover’s memoir of educating herself out of isolation — self-invention through learning, a pick he shares with Bill Gates.
WebsiteSource: Barack Obama — 2018 summer reading list
The comparative-politics warning that gives his democracy theme its analytical backbone.
WebsiteSource: Barack Obama — favourite books of 2018
Rosling’s data-driven optimism about global progress — evidence over instinct, another pick shared with Bill Gates.
WebsiteSource: Barack Obama — 2018 summer reading list
Tegmark on artificial intelligence and humanity’s future — the science-and-technology strand of his reading.
WebsiteSource: Barack Obama — favourite books of 2018
Keefe’s narrative history of the Troubles — memory, violence and reckoning, his most recent pick in this curated core.
WebsiteSource: Barack Obama — favourite books of 2019His most durable favourites are literary: Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, alongside formative reading such as Moby-Dick and Emerson’s Self-Reliance, and the history that shaped his political thinking, like Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals.
He has pointed most warmly to Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead — he called its pastor, John Ames, one of his favourite characters in fiction — and to Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, which he has described as a book he thinks of when imagining people going through hardship.
Emphatically. Fiction is central to his reading, and he has said reading helped him slow down, gain perspective, and "get in somebody else’s shoes." His lists are unusually novel-heavy for a political figure — from Gilead and Exit West to A Gentleman in Moscow.
Morrison is his central literary influence. He has said her writing carries a rare moral and emotional intensity, and of Song of Solomon that it is "not just pain, but there’s joy and glory and mystery." In 2012 he awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Mostly literary fiction, African American literature and history, biography and history, global and immigrant stories, and the occasional book on science and technology. The common thread is reading — especially fiction — as a way to understand other people and how societies work.
Yes. Since leaving office he has published annual "favourite books" and summer reading lists, and has continued them well past 2019 — expanding into contemporary fiction, inequality, history and technology.