Barack Obama's Reading Lists
This is one of the 743 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.
About this list
Barack Obama, 172 Books
This is every book that Barack Obama listed on his yearly reading lists since 2008 to 2015
This list was originally published in 2025 and was added to this site 8 months ago.
| Rank | Book | Authors | Year | Country | Language | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10891 | Mark Twain | Ron Chernow | 2025 | American | English | |
| 9041 | The Book Of Records | Madeleine Thien | 2025 | Canadian | English | |
| 8706 | King Of Ashes | S. A. Cosby | 2025 | Unknown | English | |
| 7913 | Abundance | Ezra Klein | 2025 | American | English | |
| 14901 | Rosarita | Anita Desai | 2024 | Unknown | English | |
| 8379 | Audition | Katie Kitamura | 2025 | Unknown | English | |
| 7687 | The Buffalo Hunter Hunter | Stephen Graham Jones | 2025 | American | English | |
| 8296 | A Marriage At Sea | Sophie Elmhirst | 2024 | British | English | |
| 11011 | Who Is Government? | Michael M. Lewis | 2025 | Unknown | English | |
| 17008 | The Sirens' Call | Chris Hayes | 2025 | American | English | |
| 2801 | James | Percival Everett | 2024 | American | English | |
| 7549 | There's Always This Year | Hanif Abdurraqib | 2024 | American | English | |
| 17008 | Everyone Who Is Gone Here | Jonathan Blitzer | American | English | ||
| 17008 | Reading Genesis | Marilynne Robinson | American | Unknown | ||
| 8442 | Headshot | Rita Bullwinkel | 2024 | Unknown | English | |
| 6146 | The God Of The Woods | Liz Moore | 2024 | Unknown | English | |
| 17008 | Beautiful Days | Zach Williams | 2024 | American | English | |
| 5793 | Martyr! | Kaveh Akbar | 2024 | American | English | |
| 14901 | Memory Piece | Lisa Ko | 2024 | Unknown | English | |
| 8515 | The Ministry Of Time | Kaliane Bradley | 2024 | Unknown | English | |
| 7617 | When The Clock Broke | John Ganz | 2024 | Unknown | English | |
| 14901 | Of Boys And Men | Richard Reeves | 2022 | Unknown | English | |
| 7937 | The Wide Wide Sea | Hampton Sides | 2024 | Unknown | English | |
| 14901 | Help Wanted | Adelle Waldman | 2024 | Unknown | English | |
| 7791 | Poverty, By America | Matthew Desmond | 2023 | American | English | |
| 7906 | Small Mercies | Dennis Lehane | 2023 | American | English | |
| 5990 | King | Jonathan Eig | 2023 | American | English | |
| 7128 | Hello Beautiful | Ann Napolitano | 2023 | American | English | |
| 8728 | All The Sinners Bleed | S. A. Cosby | 2023 | American | English | |
| 7674 | Birnam Wood | Eleanor Catton | 2023 | New Zealand | English | |
| 17008 | What Napoleon Could Not Do | DK Nnuro | 2023 | British | English | |
| 7143 | The Wager | David Grann | 2023 | American | English | |
| 17008 | Blue Hour | Tiffany Clarke Harrison | 2023 | American | English | |
| 12457 | Sea Of Tranquility | Emily St John Mandel | 2022 | Canadian | English | |
| 14293 | Why We're Polarized | Ezra Klein | 2020 | American | English | |
| 9242 | The Candy House | Jennifer Egan | 2022 | American | English | |
| 14901 | A Little Devil In America | Hanif Abdurraqib | 2021 | American | English | |
| 17008 | To Paradise | Hanya Yanagihara | 2022 | American | English | |
| 17008 | Silverview | John le Carré | 2021 | British | English | |
| 12350 | Black Cake | Charmaine Wilkerson | 2022 | American | English | |
| 17008 | The Family Chao | Lan Samantha Chang | 2022 | American | English | |
| 17008 | Velvet Was The Night | Silvia Moreno-Garcia | 2021 | Mexican | English | |
| 14901 | Mouth To Mouth | Antoine Wilson | 2022 | American | English | |
| 17008 | The Great Experiment | Yascha Mounk | 2022 | American | English | |
| 13545 | The School For Good Mothers | Jessamine Chan | 2022 | American | English | |
| 14901 | Razorblade Tears | S. A. Cosby | 2021 | American | English | |
| 5417 | At Night All Blood Is Black | David Diop | 2018 | French | French | |
| 17008 | Land Of Big Numbers | Te-Ping Chen | 2021 | American | English | |
| 8283 | Empire Of Pain | Patrick Radden Keefe | 2021 | American | English | |
| 6972 | Project Hail Mary | Andy Weir | 2021 | American | English | |
| 3199 | When We Cease To Understand The World | Adrian Nathan West, Benjamin Labatut | 2020 | Chilean | Spanish | |
| 14165 | Under A White Sky | Elizabeth Kolbert | 2021 | American | English | |
| 17008 | Things We Lost To The Water | Eric Nguyen | 2021 | Unknown | English | |
| 17008 | Leave the World Behind | Rumaan Alam | 2020 | English | ||
| 4968 | Klara And The Sun | Kazuo Ishiguro | 2021 | British | English | |
| 14901 | The Sweetness Of Water | Nathan Harris | 2021 | American | English | |
| 10424 | Intimacies | Katie Kitamura | 2021 | American | English | |
| 10424 | Homeland Elegies | Ayad Akhtar | 2020 | American | English | |
| 17008 | Jack | Marilynne Robinson | 2020 | American | English | |
| 5580 | Caste | Isabel Wilkerson | 2020 | American | English | |
| 6776 | The Splendid And The Vile | Erik Larson | 2020 | American | English | |
| 14165 | Luster | Raven Leilani | 2020 | American | English | |
| 14901 | How Much Of These Hills Is Gold | C Pam Zhang | 2020 | American | English | |
| 14901 | Long Bright River | Liz Moore | 2020 | American | English | |
| 8922 | Memorial Drive | Natasha Trethewey | 2020 | American | English | |
| 17008 | Twilight Of Democracy | Anne Applebaum | 2020 | American | English | |
| 4610 | Deacon King Kong | James McBride | 2020 | American | English | |
| 17008 | The Undocumented Americans | Karla Cornejo Villavicencio | 2020 | American | English | |
| 3608 | The Vanishing Half | Brit Bennett | 2020 | American | English | |
| 14901 | The Glass Hotel | Emily St John Mandel | 2020 | Canadian | English | |
| 6598 | Hidden Valley Road | Robert Kolker | 2020 | American | English | |
| 5471 | The Ministry For the Future | Kim Stanley Robinson | 2020 | American | English | |
| 14901 | Sharks In The Time Of Saviors | Kawai Strong Washburn | 2020 | American | English | |
| 17008 | Missionaries | Phil Klay | 2020 | American | English | |
| 4583 | The Nickel Boys | Colson Whitehead | 2019 | American | English | |
| 6888 | Exhalation | Ted Chiang | 2019 | American | English | |
| 402 | Wolf Hall | Hilary Mantel | 2009 | British | English | |
| 14165 | Men Without Women | Haruki Murakami | 2014 | Japanese | Japanese | |
| 17008 | American Spy | Lauren Wilkinson | 2019 | Unknown | English | |
| 6341 | The Shallows | Nicolas Carr | 2010 | American | English | |
| 14901 | Lab Girl | Hope Jahren | 2016 | American | English | |
| 8755 | Inland | Téa Obreht | 2019 | American | English | |
| 14901 | How To Read The Air | Dinaw Mengestu | 2010 | American | English | |
| 17008 | Maid | Stephanie Land | 2019 | American | English | |
| 11194 | Becoming | Michelle Obama | 2018 | American | English | |
| 2632 | An American Marriage | Tayari Jones | 2018 | American | English | |
| 441 | Americanah | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | 2013 | Nigerian | English | |
| 17008 | The Broken Ladder | Keith Payne | 2017 | American | English | |
| 2408 | Educated | Tara Westover | 2018 | American | English | |
| 12838 | Factfulness | Hans Rosling | 2018 | Swedish | English | |
| 17008 | Futureface | Alex Wagner | 2018 | American | English | |
| 2258 | A Grain Of Wheat | Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o | 1967 | Kenyan | English | |
| 223 | A House for Mr. Biswas | V. S. Naipaul | 1961 | Trinidadian | English | |
| 17008 | How Democracies Die | Steven Levitsky | 2018 | American | English | |
| 17008 | In The Shadow Of Statues | Mitch Landrieu | 2018 | American | English | |
| 2267 | Long Walk To Freedom | Nelson Mandela | 1994 | South African | English | |
| 17008 | The New Geography Of Jobs | Enrico Moretti | 2012 | American | English | |
| 2920 | The Return | Hisham Matar | 2016 | Libyan | English | |
| 60 | Things Fall Apart | Chinua Achebe | 1958 | Nigerian | English | |
| 6344 | Warlight | Michael Ondaatje | 2018 | Canadian | English | |
| 17008 | Why Liberalism Failed | Patrick J. Deneen | 2018 | American | English | |
| 17008 | The World As It Is | Ben Rhodes | 2018 | American | English | |
| 6971 | American Prison | Shane Bauer | 2018 | American | English | |
| 10424 | Arthur Ashe: A Life | Raymond Arsenault | 2018 | Unknown | English | |
| 4151 | Asymmetry | Lisa Halliday | 2018 | American | English | |
| 4994 | Feel Free | Zadie Smith | 2018 | British | English | |
| 17008 | Florida | Lauren Groff | 2018 | American | English | |
| 2985 | Frederick Douglass | David W. Blight | 2018 | American | English | |
| 10165 | Immigrant, Montana | Amitava Kumar | 2017 | American | English | |
| 4819 | The Largesse of the Sea Maiden | Denis Johnson | 2018 | American | English | |
| 14059 | Life 3.0 | Max Tegmark | 2017 | Swedish | English | |
| 2410 | There There | Tommy Orange | 2018 | American | English | |
| 6895 | Washington Black | Esi Edugyan | 2018 | Canadian | English | |
| 2666 | The Power | Naomi Alderman | 2016 | British | English | |
| 5320 | Grant | Ron Chernow | 2017 | American | English | |
| 1392 | Evicted | Matthew Desmond | 2016 | American | English | |
| 17008 | Janesville | Amy Goldstein | Unknown | Unknown | ||
| 2216 | Exit West | Mohsin Hamid | 2017 | Pakistani | English | |
| 17008 | Five Carat Soul | James McBride | 2017 | American | English | |
| 13890 | Anything Is Possible | Elizabeth Strout | 2017 | American | English |