The Books President Obama Reads

Martin Luther King's Letter From Birmingham Jail

The Post-American World

Fareed Zakaria

"This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else." So begins Fareed Zakaria's important new work on the era we are now entering. Following on the success of his best-selling The Future of Freedom, Zakaria describes with equal prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the "rise of the rest"-the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others-as the great story of our time, and one that will reshape the world.

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Turning to the book that Barack Obama has most recently cited as a major influence to him, Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln," it is not the Lincoln of popular American myth - the secular saint and martyr - we find praised there. It's Lincoln the wily politician, who was not above carefully hedging his public positions and who prided himself on cajoling his opponents to his side.

Moral Man and Immoral Society

Reinhold Niebuhr

Niebuhr's compelling idea was that there is serious evil in the world and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn't use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction.

Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals

Saul Alinsky

If you haven't read "Rules for Radicals," it's not what you might expect. Written with a vigour and a panache that convey Alinsky's legendary charisma, it is less a primer than a really concise, witty and iconoclastic manifesto crossed with a war manual. Alinsky wrote it to try to correct the many errors of the generation of activists produced by the 1960s, which he regarded as being too dogmatic, too self-righteous, too romantic, too idealistic, too infatuated with exotic ideas and too impatient.

Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements

Malcolm X

According to "Dreams From My Father," among the many characters in African-American literature, the one that the adolescent Barack Obama felt closest to was Malcolm X, whose discipline and "repeated acts of self-creation" impressed him. Yet, when Malcolm X wrote of the desire to "expunge" the white blood in his veins, the young Obama "was left to wonder what else I would be severing if and when I left my mother and my grandparents on some uncharted border."

More Authors And The Books That Have Contributed to the Shaping of Obama

E. L. Doctorow, Taylor Branch, Ralph Ellison, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ernest Hemmingway

E. L. Doctorow is perhaps Barack Obama's favorite author, although throughout his life he has had several authors who in their time have been his favorite, because of the content of their books and the depth of the subject that they covered.

James Baldwin, W. E. B. DuBois, Toni Morrison, Herman Melville, Thomas Jefferson

Whether it be fiction or historical novels, many profound, thought provoking subjects have featured in the reading experiences of Barack Obama.

Graham Greene, Doris Lessing, John Steinbeck, Robert Caro

He extensively explored and inwardly digested the historical and fictional concept of 'power' and its affect on the lives of people.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Studs Terkel, Adam Smith, Robert Penn Warren

The empathy that Obama shows in his involvement with other people is drawn from, his reading of and deep understanding in, how people express their feelings and sentiments about themselves and the life around them.

Marilynne Robinson, Paul Tillich, Philip Roth, Langston Hughes, Friedrich Nietzsche

Obama uses words like audacity, courage, belief, hope, change and is willing to withstand all adversities to achieve his philosophy of making the world a better place.

The Books That Barack Obama Wrote

By far the bestselling titles are the President's own two tomes: Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope.

Barack Obama is not only a devourer of books, which means that he has gleaned insights from thousands of books over his lifetime. But as a young man he had a taste to try his hand at writing short stories during those early years in Chicago,

He has already shown with his best selling books that he also has a passion for writing good literature as well.

Follow The Story of His Amazing Journey

Against All The Odds He Became The 44th President of the USA

He had total belief in himself and an unwavering faith in the spirits of the people of the country that had given him the chance to fulfil his dream and the dream of all Americans.

Young Future Voter's Reading

Suggested Reading For President Obama

President Obama has many things that he wants to achieve in his first term of presidency and these books are suggested as the possible areas that may well get his focused attention.