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The ReadDown

Barack Obama’s Book Picks of the Season

by PRH Editors

Since his time in the White House, former President Barack Obama has been sharing his favorite reads from the previous months. Here are his most recent book recommendations spanning everything from the most talked-about novels, insightful nonfiction, and everything in between.

  1. 1
    James (Pulitzer Prize Winner) Book Cover Picture
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    James (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

    by Percival Everett

    When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father. While many narrative set pieces of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place, Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.
    James (Pulitzer Prize Winner) Book Cover Picture
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    Hardcover
    $28.00

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  2. 2
    There's Always This Year Book Cover Picture
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    There’s Always This Year

    by Hanif Abdurraqib

    Growing up in Columbus, Ohio, in the 1990s, Hanif Abdurraqib witnessed a golden era of basketball, one in which legends like LeBron James were forged and countless others weren’t. His lifelong love of the game leads Abdurraqib into a lyrical, historical, and emotionally rich exploration of what it means to make it, who we think deserves success, the tension between excellence and expectation, and the very notion of role models, all of which he expertly weaves together with intimate, personal storytelling.
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    $20.00

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  3. 3
    Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here Book Cover Picture
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    Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here

    by Jonathan Blitzer

    Hundreds of thousands of people who arrive every year at the US-Mexico border travel far from their homes. An overwhelming share of them come from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, although many migrants come from farther away. Some are fleeing persecution, others crime or hunger. New Yorker staff writer Jonathan Blitzer brilliantly weaves the stories of Central Americans whose lives have been devastated by chronic political conflict and violence with those of American activists, government officials, and the politicians responsible for the country’s tragically tangled immigration policy.
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    $21.00

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  4. 4
    Headshot Book Cover Picture
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    Headshot

    by Rita Bullwinkel

    An unexpected tragedy at a community pool. A family’s unrelenting expectation of victory. The desire to gain or lose control; to make time speed up or stop; to be frighteningly, undeniably good at something. Each of the eight teenage girl boxers in this blistering debut novel has her own reasons for the sacrifices she has made to come to Reno, Nevada, to compete to be named the best in the country. Through a series of face-offs that are raw, ecstatic, and punctuated by flashes of humor and tenderness, prizewinning writer Rita Bullwinkel animates the competitors’ pasts and futures as they summon the emotion, imagination, and force of will required to win.
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    Paperback
    $18.00

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  5. 5
    The God of the Woods Book Cover Picture
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    The God of the Woods

    by Liz Moore

    Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any 13-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished 14 years ago, never to be found. As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances.
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    Hardcover
    $30.00

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  6. 6
    Beautiful Days Book Cover Picture
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    Beautiful Days

    by Zach Williams

    A couple awakens in a home in the woods to find themselves rapidly aging as their toddler remains unchanged. A work-worn employee navigates conspiracy theories and the threat of violence in an abandoned office. A tour guide leads a troublesome group to an ancient structure, apparently nonhuman in origin, discovering along the way that the most mysterious creatures of all are right beside him. These 10 stories show the fallibility of time and how reality reveals itself behind the gauze of a dream — or a nightmare. With exquisite prose and a lacerating wit, Beautiful Days holds a mirror to the many absurdities of being human and refuses to let us look away.
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    $17.00

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  7. 7
    Martyr! Book Cover Picture
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    Martyr!

    by Kaveh Akbar

    Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident, and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past — toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.
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    $18.00

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  8. 8
    Memory Piece Book Cover Picture
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    Memory Piece

    by Lisa Ko

    In the early 1980s, Giselle Chin, Jackie Ong, and Ellen Ng are three teenagers drawn together by their shared sense of alienation and desire for something different. By the time they are adults, their dreams are murkier. Over time their friendship matures and changes, their definitions of success become complicated, and their sense of what matters evolves. Moving from the predigital 1980s to the art and tech subcultures of the 1990s to a strikingly imagined portrait of the 2040s, Memory Piece is an innovative and audacious story of three lifelong friends as they strive to build satisfying lives in a world that turns out to be radically different from the one they were promised.
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    $19.00

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  9. 9
    The Wide Wide Sea Book Cover Picture
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    The Wide Wide Sea

    by Hampton Sides

    On July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook, already lionized as the greatest explorer in British history, set off on his third voyage in his ship the HMS Resolution. Two-and-a-half years later, on a beach on the island of Hawaii, Cook was killed in a conflict with native Hawaiians. Hampton Sides’ bravura account of Cook’s last journey both wrestles with Cook’s complex and controversial legacy and provides a thrilling narrative of the titanic efforts and continual danger that characterized exploration in the 1700s.
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    Paperback
    $19.00

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