Barack Obama’s Book Picks of the Season

One woman, the performance of a lifetime. Or two. An exhilarating, destabilizing Möbius strip of a novel that asks whether we ever really know the people we love. Taut and hypnotic, Audition is Katie Kitamura at her virtuosic best.

An instant New York Times bestseller, this is the electrifying true story of a young couple shipwrecked at sea: a mind-blowing tale of obsession, survival, and partnership stretched to its limits. A Marriage at Sea pairs an adrenaline-fueled high seas adventure with a gutting love story that asks why we love difficult people, and who we become under the most extreme conditions imaginable.

Who works for the government and why does their work matter? An urgent and absorbing civics lesson from an all-star team of writers and storytellers. Michael Lewis invited his favorite writers, including Casey Cep, Dave Eggers, John Lanchester, Geraldine Brooks, Sarah Vowell, and W. Kamau Bell, to join him in finding someone doing an interesting job for the government and writing about them. They show how the essential business of government makes our lives possible, and how much it matters.

From the New York Times bestselling author and MSNBC and podcast host, a powerful, wide-angle reckoning with how the assault from attention capitalism on our minds and our hearts has reordered our politics and the very fabric of our society.

A Barack Obama 2023 Summer Reading selection. America is seen through the eyes and ambitions of three characters with ties to Africa in this gripping novel.

A Barack Obama 2024 Summer Reading selection. An exquisite homage to Louisa May Alcott’s timeless classic, Little Women, Hello Beautiful is a profoundly moving portrait of what is possible when we choose to love someone not in spite of who they are, but because of it.

A Barack Obama 2023 Summer Reading selection. What is motherhood in the midst of uncertainty, buried trauma, and an unraveling America? What it’s always been — a love song.