Obama's summer reading: shelf disclosures

Mark Lawson unpacks the semiotics of the president’s holiday picks, finding signals of sophistication, seriousness and a little self-aggrandisement

Barack Obama has reached the stage of his administration when plans are being made for the construction in Chicago of the Presidential library that former American leaders get to set up in their memory. But, before that, he – or his aides – have also had to think about a smaller library: the shelf of books that the American people are told their leader plans to read on his summer vacation.

Although this duty reduced in intensity during the tenure of George W Bush, Obama is the most bookish of modern residents of the White House, unusual in having published before he reached Washington two bestselling memoirs – Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope – that were works of genuine literary merit, and which he wrote himself, rather than campaign autobiographies typed by advisers.

Continue reading...