Barack Obama’s Book Picks of the Season
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.
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Add to BookshelfPoverty, by America
by Matthew Desmond
The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Elegantly written and fiercely argued, this compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions, calling on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom.
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$28.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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2
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Hello Beautiful
by Ann Napolitano
William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him — so when he meets the spirited and ambitious Julia Padavano in his freshman year of college, it’s as if the world has lit up around him. With Julia and her sisters, William experiences a newfound contentment; every moment in their house is filled with loving chaos. But then darkness from William’s past surfaces and the result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?
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$28.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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3
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What Napoleon Could Not Do
by DK Nnuro
When siblings Jacob and Belinda Nti were growing up in Ghana, their goal was simple: to move to America. For them, the United States was both an opportunity and a struggle, a goal and an obstacle. For each sibling, their desires and ambitions highlight the promise and the disappointment that life in a new country offers. How each character comes to understand this and how each learns from both their dashed hopes and their fulfilled dreams lie at the heart of what makes What Napoleon Could Not Do such a compelling, insightful read.
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$28.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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4
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The Wager
by David Grann
From the author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a page-turning story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. The powerful narrative reveals the deeper meaning of the events on The Wager, showing that it was not only the captain and crew who ended up on trial, but the very idea of empire.
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$30.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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5
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Blue Hour
by Tiffany Clarke Harrison
Our narrator is a gifted photographer, an uncertain wife, an infertile mother, a biracial woman in an unraveling America. As she grapples with a lifetime of ambivalence about motherhood, yet another act of police brutality makes headlines, and this time the victim is Noah, a boy in her photography class. Unmoored by grief, she throws herself into a new documentary on motherhood, and makes secret visits to Noah in the hospital, only to learn that she is, impossibly, pregnant. As the future shifts once more, she must decide yet again what she dares hope the shape of her future to be. Fearless, timely, blazing with voice, Blue Hour is a fragmentary novel with unignorable storytelling power.
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$15.95Buy from Other Retailers:
