Rory Gilmore would undoubtedly agree with former U.S. President Barack Obama that “reading is the gateway skill that makes all other learning possible.” In fact, I’d like to believe she would have personally talked books with him on the campaign trail. And perhaps even inspired his popular biannual presidential reading lists?!
Okay, okay, I know I’m pushing it.
But they aren’t the only bookworms around these parts. I’m an information nerd who, for years now, maintained a complete list of books he recommended, all the way back from his first year in the Oval Office, 2009, until the present.
I used Barack Obama’s social media pages for most of my sourcing, then filled in the gaps with trustworthy resources, which I cited. I did not include his own books or book recommendations outside of his “official” lists.
Why? Again, information nerd. I’ve also gotten some great recs over the years and like to see what titles I have in common with a former president. So, book nerd also.
Obama generally releases a summer reading list near the end of summer (often during his famous Martha’s Vineyard vacations) and a favorite books of the year list in December. His curations are often a mix of fiction and nonfiction and lean towards highly acclaimed books about social and/or political topics.
Here’s the good news and why I’m sharing this right now: he just released 2026’s summer reading list for us to devour on our own vacations, and it includes two of my best books of the year: Whistler by Ann Patchett and The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout.
Check them out, along with every other book he’s ever recommended in his presidential capacity.
As a reader like Rory Gilmore, I also reviewed the ones I read with star ratings to further help you pick your next great read recommended by a former United States president. There are so many five-star books I think Rory would love, too! Any questions? Just leave a comment, and I’ll try to help you pick.
Tip: This is the kind of info-heavy post you may want to save for future reference.
Kin by Tayari Jones (my review: ★★★★☆)
The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout (my review: ★★★★★)
A World Appears by Michael Pollan
Whistler by Ann Patchett (my review: ★★★★★)
This Land is Your Land by Beverly Gage
Vigil by George Saunders
One Sun Only by Camille Bordas
Seek Immediate Shelter by Vincent Yu
Data Empire by Roopika Risam
Transcription by Ben Lerner
Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead
Paper Girl by Beth Macy
Flashlight by Susan Choi
We the People by Jill Lepore
The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy
There Is No Place for Us by Brian Goldstone
North Sun by Ethan Rutherford
1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
Dead and Alive by Zadie Smith
What We Can Know by Ian McEwan
The Look by Michelle Obama
Mark Twain by Ron Chernow
The Book of Records by Madeleine Thien
King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby
Rosarita by Anita Desai
Audition by Katie Kitamura
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
Abundance by Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson (my review: ★★★☆☆)
A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst
Who is Government? by Michael Lewis
The Sirens’ Call by Chris Hayes
(Source)
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
Patriot by Alexi Navalny
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas
Stolen Pride by Arlie Russell Hochschild
In Ascension by Martin MacInnes
Growth by Daniel Susskind
Someone Like Us by Dinaw Mengestu
The Work of Art by Adam Moss
(Source)
James by Percival Everett (my review: ★★★★☆)
There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib
Everyone Who Is Gone Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis by Jonathan Blitzer
Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson
Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel
The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (my review: ★★★★★)
Beautiful Days by Zach Williams
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
Memory Piece by Lisa Ko
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s by John Ganz
Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What To Do About It by Richard Reeves
The Wide, Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook by James Sides
Help Wanted by Adelle Waldman
(Source)
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride (my review: ★★★★★)
The Maniac by Benjamin Labatut
Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond
How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair
The Wager by David Grann
Chip War by Chris Miller
The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff
Humanly Possible by Sarah Bakewell
King: A Life by Jonathan Eig
The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese (my review: ★★★★★)
The Best Minds by Jonathan Rosen
All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby
The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory by Tim Alberta
Some People Need Killing by Patricia Evangelista
This Other Eden by Paul Harding
(Source)
Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond
Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane
King: A Life by Jonathan Eig
Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano (my review: ★★★★★)
All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
What Napoleon Could Not Do by DK Nnuro
The Wager by David Grann
Blue Hour by Tiffany Clarke Harrison
(Source)
South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry
Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson (my review: ★★★★★)
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton
The Furrows: A Novel by Namwali Serpell
An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong
Liberation Day by George Saunders
The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama (my review: ★★★★☆)
The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams by Stacy Schiff
The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan (Read with Jenna)
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Trust by Hernan Diaz (my review: ★★★☆☆)
(Source)
Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson ( my review: ★★★★★)
Blood in the Garden: The Flagrant History of the 1990s New York Knicks by Chris Herring
The Candy House by Jennifer Egan
The Family Chao by Lan Samantha Chang
The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure by Yascha Mounk
A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib
Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson
Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby
The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Silverview by John le Carre
To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara
Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein
(Source)
Aftershocks by Nadia Owuso
Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang (my review: ★★★☆☆)
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner (my review: ★★★★★)
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton (my review: ★★★☆☆)
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith
Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in An American City by Andrea Elliott
The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles (my review: ★★★☆☆)
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
Matrix by Lauren Groff
These Precious Days by Ann Patchett (my review: ★★★★☆)
(Source)
At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop
Intimacies by Katie Kitamura
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe
Land of Big Numbers by Te-Ping Chen
Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam (my review: ★★★☆☆)
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (my review: ★★★★☆)
The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris
Things We Lost to the Water by Eric Nguyen
Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert
When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut
(Source)
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson (my review: ★★★★★)
Deacon King Kong by James McBride (my review: ★★★★☆)
Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker
Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar
How Much of These Hills is Gold by C. Pam Zhang
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
Jack by Marilynne Robinson
Long Bright River by Liz Moore (my review: ★★★★★)
Luster by Raven Leilani
Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
Missionaries by Phil Klay
Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn
The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson
Twilight of Democracy by Anne Applebaum
The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (my review: ★★★★★)
(Source)
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshanna Zuboff
The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company by William Dalrymple
A Different Way to Win: Dan Rooney’s Story from the Super Bowl to the Rooney Rule by Jim Rooney
Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
Lot: Stories by Bryan Washington
Normal People by Sally Rooney (my review: ★★★★★)
The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson
The Yellow House by Sarah H. Broom
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
The Sixth Man by Andre Iguodala
Solitary by Albert Woodfox
The Topeka School by Ben Lerner
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino
Trust Exercise by Susan Choi
We Live in Water: Stories by Jess Walter
(Source)
The Collected Works of Toni Morrison
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (my review: ★★★★☆)
Exhalation by Ted Chiang
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami
American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson
The Shallows by Nicholas Carr
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
Inland by Tea Obreht
How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu
Maid by Stephanie Land
(Source)
Becoming by Michelle Obama (my review: ★★★★★)
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones (my review: ★★★☆☆)
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
American Prison by Shane Bauer
Arthur Ashe: A Life by Raymond Arsenault
Asymmetry by Lisa Haliday
The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die by Keith Payne
Educated by Tara Westover (my review: ★★★★★)
Factfulness by Hans Rosling
Feel Free by Zadie Smith
Florida by Lauren Groff
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight
Futureface: A Family Mystery, an Epic Quest, and the Secret to Belonging by Alex Wagner
A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong’o
A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul
How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
Immigrant, Montana by Amitava Kumar
In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History by Mitch Landrieu
The Largesse of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson
Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark
Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
The New Geography of Jobs by Enrico Moretti
There There by Tommy Orange (my review: ★★★★☆)
The Truth by Hisham Matar
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Warlight by Michael Ondaatje
Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deneen
The World As It Is by Ben Rhodes
(Source)
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones (my review: ★★★☆☆)
Educated by Tara Westover (my review: ★★★★★)
Factfulness by Hans Rosling
A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul
Warlight by Michael Ondaatje
(Source)
Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
Coach Wooden and Me by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Basketball (and Other Things) by Shea Serrano
Dying: A Memoir by Cory Taylor
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
Five-Carat Soul by James McBride
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (my review: ★★★★★)
Grant by Ron Chernow
Janesville: An American Story by Amy Goldstein
The Power by Naomi Alderman
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
(Source)
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (my review: ★★★★★)
H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (my review: ★★★★☆)
(Source)
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (my review: ★★★☆☆)
All That Is by James Salter
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow
(Source)
Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Dr. Atul Gawande (my review: ★★★★★)
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
The Laughing Monsters by Denis Johnson
The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
Nora Webster by Colm Toibin
(Source)
President Obama did not share a list this year.
President Obama did not share a list this year.
The Bayou Trilogy by Daniel Woodrell
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
Rodin’s Debutante by Ward Just
To the End of the Land by David Grossman
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
(Source)
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
Tinkers by Paul Harding
A Few Corrections by Brad Leithauser
President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime by Lou Cannon
(Source: DC Library)
Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Tom Friedman
John Adams by David McCullough
Lush Life by Richard Price
Plainsong by Kent Haruf
The Way Home by George Pelecanos
(Source)
Yes, I know, this is a really big list. So, if you just want to get started reading like Obama this summer, go with the best of his newest recommendations—two of my own best books of the year: Whistler by Ann Patchett and The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout. Both are the kind of exquisitely written literary fiction that remains compulsively readable at the same time and are totally right up Rory Gilmore’s alley.
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