OBAMA'S READING LISTS

Barack Obama's Reading Lists: Every Book Pick

Since his presidency, Barack Obama has shared two annual book lists: a summer reading list (mid-year) and a year-end "favorite books, movies, and music" list. He publishes them on his Medium page and via the Obama Foundation, recommending readers pick them up at independent bookstores or libraries.

112 picks · hosted by Barack Obama · since 2009.

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  1. December 2025
    The Look

    by Michelle Obama

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  2. December 2025
    What We Can Know

    by Ian McEwan

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  3. December 2025
    Dead and Alive

    by Zadie Smith

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  4. December 2025
    The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

    by Kiran Desai

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  5. December 2025
    1929

    by Andrew Ross Sorkin

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  6. December 2025
    North Sun

    by Ethan Rutherford

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  7. December 2025
    There Is No Place for Us

    by Brian Goldstone

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  8. December 2025
    The Wilderness

    by Angela Flournoy

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  9. December 2025
    We the People

    by Jill Lepore

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  10. December 2025
    Flashlight

    by Susan Choi

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  11. December 2025
    Paper Girl

    by Beth Macy

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  12. Summer 2025
    Mark Twain

    by Ron Chernow

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  13. Summer 2025
    The Book of Records

    by Madeleine Thien

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  14. Summer 2025
    King of Ashes

    by S.A. Cosby

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  15. Summer 2025
    Abundance

    by Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson

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  16. Summer 2025
    Rosarita

    by Anita Desai

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  17. Summer 2025
    Audition

    by Katie Kitamura

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  18. Summer 2025
    The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

    by Stephen Graham Jones

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  19. Summer 2025
    A Marriage at Sea

    by Sophie Elmhirst

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  20. Summer 2025
    Who Is Government?

    by Michael Lewis

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  21. Summer 2025
    The Sirens' Call

    by Chris Hayes

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  22. December 2024
    The Anxious Generation

    by Jonathan Haidt

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  23. December 2024
    Intermezzo

    by Sally Rooney

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  24. December 2024
    Patriot

    by Alexei Navalny

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  25. December 2024
    Orbital

    by Samantha Harvey

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  26. December 2024
    The Anthropologists

    by Ayşegül Savaş

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  27. December 2024
    Stolen Pride

    by Arlie Russell Hochschild

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  28. December 2024
    In Ascension

    by Martin MacInnes

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  29. December 2024
    Growth

    by Daniel Susskind

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  30. December 2024
    Someone Like Us

    by Dinaw Mengestu

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  31. December 2024
    The Work of Art

    by Adam Moss

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  32. Summer 2024
    James

    by Percival Everett

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  33. Summer 2024
    There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension

    by Hanif Abdurraqib

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  34. Summer 2024
    Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis

    by Jonathan Blitzer

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  35. Summer 2024
    Reading Genesis

    by Marilynne Robinson

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  36. Summer 2024
    Headshot

    by Rita Bullwinkel

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  37. Summer 2024
    The God of the Woods

    by Liz Moore

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  38. Summer 2024
    Beautiful Days: Stories

    by Zach Williams

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  39. Summer 2024
    Martyr!

    by Kaveh Akbar

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  40. Summer 2024
    Memory Piece

    by Lisa Ko

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  41. Summer 2024
    The Ministry of Time

    by Kaliane Bradley

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  42. Summer 2024
    When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s

    by John Ganz

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  43. Summer 2024
    Of Boys and Men

    by Richard V. Reeves

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  44. Summer 2024
    The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook

    by Hampton Sides

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  45. Summer 2024
    Help Wanted

    by Adelle Waldman

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  46. December 2023
    The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store

    by James McBride

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  47. December 2023
    The MANIAC

    by Benjamín Labatut

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  48. December 2023
    Poverty, by America

    by Matthew Desmond

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  49. December 2023
    How to Say Babylon

    by Safiya Sinclair

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  50. December 2023
    The Wager

    by David Grann

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  51. December 2023
    Chip War

    by Chris Miller

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  52. December 2023
    The Vaster Wilds

    by Lauren Groff

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  53. December 2023
    Humanly Possible

    by Sarah Bakewell

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  54. December 2023
    King: A Life

    by Jonathan Eig

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  55. December 2023
    The Covenant of Water

    by Abraham Verghese

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  56. December 2023
    The Best Minds

    by Jonathan Rosen

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  57. December 2023
    All the Sinners Bleed

    by S.A. Cosby

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  58. December 2023
    The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory

    by Tim Alberta

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  59. December 2023
    Some People Need Killing

    by Patricia Evangelista

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  60. December 2023
    This Other Eden

    by Paul Harding

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  61. Summer 2023
    Small Mercies

    by Dennis Lehane

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  62. Summer 2023
    Hello Beautiful

    by Ann Napolitano

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  63. Summer 2023
    Birnam Wood

    by Eleanor Catton

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  64. Summer 2023
    What Napoleon Could Not Do

    by DK Nnuro

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  65. Summer 2023
    Blue Hour

    by Tiffany Clarke Harrison

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  66. December 2022
    The Light We Carry

    by Michelle Obama

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  67. December 2022
    Sea of Tranquility

    by Emily St. John Mandel

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  68. December 2022
    Trust

    by Hernan Diaz

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  69. December 2022
    The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams

    by Stacy Schiff

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  70. December 2022
    The Furrows

    by Namwali Serpell

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  71. December 2022
    South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation

    by Imani Perry

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  72. December 2022
    The School for Good Mothers

    by Jessamine Chan

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  73. December 2022
    Black Cake

    by Charmaine Wilkerson

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  74. December 2022
    Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands

    by Kate Beaton

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  75. December 2022
    An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

    by Ed Yong

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  76. December 2022
    Liberation Day

    by George Saunders

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  77. December 2022
    The Candy House

    by Jennifer Egan

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  78. December 2022
    Afterlives

    by Abdulrazak Gurnah

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  79. Summer 2022
    Why We're Polarized

    by Ezra Klein

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  80. Summer 2022
    A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance

    by Hanif Abdurraqib

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  81. Summer 2022
    To Paradise

    by Hanya Yanagihara

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  82. Summer 2022
    Silverview

    by John le Carré

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  83. Summer 2022
    The Family Chao

    by Lan Samantha Chang

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  84. Summer 2022
    Velvet Was the Night

    by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  85. Summer 2022
    Mouth to Mouth

    by Antoine Wilson

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  86. Summer 2022
    The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure

    by Yascha Mounk

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  87. Summer 2022
    Razorblade Tears

    by S.A. Cosby

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  88. Summer 2022
    Blood in the Garden: The Flagrant History of the 1990s New York Knicks

    by Chris Herring

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  89. December 2021
    Matrix

    by Lauren Groff

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  90. December 2021
    How the Word Is Passed

    by Clint Smith

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  91. December 2021
    The Final Revival of Opal & Nev

    by Dawnie Walton

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  92. December 2021
    The Lincoln Highway

    by Amor Towles

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  93. December 2021
    Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City

    by Andrea Elliott

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  94. December 2021
    Harlem Shuffle

    by Colson Whitehead

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  95. December 2021
    Cloud Cuckoo Land

    by Anthony Doerr

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  96. December 2021
    These Precious Days

    by Ann Patchett

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  97. December 2021
    Crying in H Mart

    by Michelle Zauner

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  98. December 2021
    Aftershocks

    by Nadia Owusu

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  99. December 2021
    Crossroads

    by Jonathan Franzen

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  100. December 2021
    The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

    by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  101. December 2021
    Beautiful Country

    by Qian Julie Wang

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  102. Summer 2021
    At Night All Blood Is Black

    by David Diop

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  103. Summer 2021
    Land of Big Numbers

    by Te-Ping Chen

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  104. Summer 2021
    Empire of Pain

    by Patrick Radden Keefe

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  105. Summer 2021
    Project Hail Mary

    by Andy Weir

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  106. Summer 2021
    When We Cease to Understand the World

    by Benjamín Labatut

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  107. Summer 2021
    Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future

    by Elizabeth Kolbert

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  108. Summer 2021
    Things We Lost to the Water

    by Eric Nguyen

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  109. Summer 2021
    Leave the World Behind

    by Rumaan Alam

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  110. Summer 2021
    Klara and the Sun

    by Kazuo Ishiguro

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  111. Summer 2021
    The Sweetness of Water

    by Nathan Harris

    Get it on AmazonPrime
  112. Summer 2021
    Intimacies

    by Katie Kitamura

    Get it on AmazonPrime

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Pick list sourced + verified against Barack Obama's Reading Lists's published selections. View the source list. Last verified 2026-06-29.

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