--- title: President Obama: Here's What He's Reading This Summer description: These are the books President Obama packed to bring with him on his family vacation to Martha's Vineyard. canonical: https://time.com/3996531/barack-obama-summer-reading/ author: Tessa Berenson article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-08-13T17:03:25.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:41:29.643Z article:section: Politics og:title: Here's What President Obama Is Reading This Summer og:description: From Pulitzer-winning fiction to a biography of George Washington og:url: https://time.com/3996531/barack-obama-summer-reading/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltaaa4d3b4b5b1675a/69885f1fe53aba53514df10e/obama-smiling.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3000 og:image:height: 1688 og:image:alt: President Obama og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Here's What President Obama Is Reading This Summer twitter:description: From Pulitzer-winning fiction to a biography of George Washington twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltaaa4d3b4b5b1675a/69885f1fe53aba53514df10e/obama-smiling.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Here's What President Obama Is Reading This Summer > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=8f7a4ee1-d9c1-4d23-befa-add97e9cc004&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Bestselling Authors Recommend Summer Books [Watch (HLS stream): Bestselling Authors Recommend Summer Books](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/yKuidEwR.m3u8) (6:54)  _Published 2010-07-03. TIME.com invites authors Gary Shteyngart, Alan Furst, Kate Moses, Teddy Wayne and Elif Batuman to share their summer reads_  by [Tessa Berenson](https://time.com/author/tessa-berenson/)  ## Tessa Berenson Aug 13, 2015 5:03 PM UTC  President Barack Obama holds a joint news conference with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff in Washington in June 2015. President Barack Obama holds a joint news conference with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff in Washington in June 2015. Chip Somodevilla—Getty Images  by [Tessa Berenson](https://time.com/author/tessa-berenson/)  ## Tessa Berenson Aug 13, 2015 5:03 PM UTC Even the leader of the free world gets a break to do some summer reading. [According to ABC News](http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-obamas-summer-reading-list/story?id=33062449), these are the books President Obama packed for his family vacation to Martha’s Vineyard: [_All That Is_](http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/160043/all-that-is-by-james-salter/) _–_ James Salter This 2013 novel by one of the most critically acclaimed modern American authors follows the life of a young man, beginning with his work as a naval officer in World War II through his later work as a book editor in New York, detailing his friendships and romances along the way. [_All The Light We Cannot See_](http://books.simonandschuster.com/All-the-Light-We-Cannot-See/Anthony-Doerr/9781476746586) _–_ Anthony Doerr This novel won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it intertwines the stories of a young blind girl in Paris and an orphan boy in Germany as they grow up around the time of World War II. [_The Sixth Extinction_](https://www.oysterbooks.com/book/TPW7JAHZFDhfLDEnp9y37P/the-sixth-extinction) _–_ Elizabeth Kolbert This 2014 nonfiction book explores previous mass extinctions on Earth and makes the case that humans and other organisms are in the midst of the sixth extinction. [_The Lowland_](https://www.oysterbooks.com/book/RPYknD24TsyddkBh5Unsfb/the-lowland) _–_ Jhumpa Lahiri This 2013 novel follows two brothers growing up in Calcutta in the 1950s and 1960s, tracing each of their lives as one moves to the U.S. and the other stays behind. [_Between The World and Me_](http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/220290/between-the-world-and-me-by-ta-nehisi-coates/) _–_ Ta-Nehisi Coates This 2015 book is written as a letter to the author’s son, exploring race and what it means to be black in the U.S. Coates often draws comparisons to James Baldwin. [_Washington: A Life_ ](http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/297691/washington-by-ron-chernow/)_–_ Ron Chernow This book from 2010 is a biography of George Washington and won a Pulitzer Prize in 2011. ### See Photos of Barack Obama in College  Chance Encounter In 1980, when Obama was a freshman at Occidental College in Los Angeles, he was approached by an aspiring photographer named Lisa Jack, who asked him if he would be willing to pose for some black and white photographs that she could use in her portfolio. Lisa Jack  Handsome Of her first meeting (in a campus eatery) with Obama, Jack remembers only that "He was really cute. But what else does a 20-year-old girl remember?" Lisa Jack  Styled In the photos, Jack says, "You can see he is just posing, initially, but as the shoot goes on, he starts to come out. He was very charismatic even then." Lisa Jack  Prop Jack never realized her dream of becoming a photographer and is now a psychologist. Lisa Jack  Pose Jack and Obama would see each other only a few more times while students. But in 2005, while on a tour, she spotted Obama on Capitol Hill and yelled hello. "He knew exactly who I was after all this time," Jack says. "I was amazed." Lisa Jack  Doubt On a dare from a skeptical friend, Jack decided to track down her negatives from the shoot. Lisa Jack  Searcher Initially, before she dug the film out from her basement, Jack never thought her pictures would have much life beyond her own darkroom. Lisa Jack  Smile When she found them, the images of Obama "blew me away," she says. "I had no idea I'd taken a whole roll of film." Lisa Jack  Charm For a while, Jack put the negatives in a safety-deposit box, so that they could not be used until after the election, when there would be no chance they could be used for a political purpose.  Thoughtful Today, Jack says, she hopes the photos reveal a "spirit of fun and thoughtfulness." Lisa Jack  The Man Who Would Be President "I'm not political," Jack says, "(But) these are historic photos and they should be shared." Lisa Jack _Read next:_ [_35 Books Everyone Should Read in Their Lifetime_](http://time.com/3967783/lifetime-book-list/?iid=time%5Freadnext) [_Download TIME’s mobile app for iOS to have your world explained wherever you go_](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/time-mobile/id328218429) ## Transcript >> It's summer, and for many of us, that means it's time to read. >> The summer read, I guess, I see this having more of this that you can see through. >> It's far away, it's long ago, it's not your problem. That constitutes a good summer read as far as I am concerned. >> I think the temptation is to say a escapist fare is for the summer, but I think, you know, any book that makes you somewhat of introspective and expansive at the same time. >> All summer books would be about love. That's really all I feel like being about on the beach. >> I dine out on a different book everyday. >> So, what's on your summer reading menu? To help you get some ideas, TIME. com talked to five authors about what they'll be packing in their beach bag. >> I do my summer reading on a screen porch out on Long Island and it just kind of flows over you. >> Plenty of people will be reading Alan Furst's latest novel for their summer read. " Spies of the Balkans" is the 11th in his series of historical novels set during World War II. But what will he be reading? >> Maybe, you wanna read a big serious book and don't care about it. That's in my-- That's what's true in my case. -" The History of Byzantium" by John Julius Norwich details the rise and fall of the world's longest empire, but for Alan Furst, it's also an escape. >> It includes just a giant truckload of emperors, all the emperors you could possibly want. Empresses, scheming princesses, scheming this, scheming that. It wasn't called Byzantine for nothing. >> Kate Moses gives readers a recipe in every chapter of her memoir, Cakewalk, which chronicles how baking was often the only way she could bring sweetness to her dysfunctional upbringing, but if her sweet tooth was her salvation, so was reading. >> When I read a book that I really love, the way it describes itself to me in my head is as delicious as-- you know, almost edible. It's like dessert. >> Like any good baker, she has more than one thing to share, starting with C. E. Morgan's coming- of- age novel, " All the Living ." >> The pull is really this young woman, Aloma, who grew up in Kentucky, like C. E. Morgan, the author. She was an orphan who lived at a mission school, had nothing to her name, and the school was in a holler. It was, you know, set in the mountains. It was always in shadow and Aloma wants to be able to see the sky and she wants to be able to see all around her. >> Moses also recommends the posthumous poetry of Deborah Digges collected in a volume called " The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart ." >> Summer is a time when people probably notice the season more than any other time. You're outside and it's warm and you're noticing the sun and the light on the leaves and the sound of crashing waves. And poetry is the means to capture all that. >> Her final selection just happens to be another one of our authors, Elif Batuman's book of essays, " The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them ." So, you might think that Elif Batuman will be reading some Tolstoy or Chekhov this summer. Instead, she's in love with the book of letters. >> And right now, the book that I'm reading is Mary Wollstonecraft's " Letters Written in Sweden, Norway and Denmark ." It's just kind of like road story and it's all set in the summer in this beautiful Scandinavian locale. And she is travelling with her daughter and with a French nursemaid and they're just going around, looking for the ship full of silver and meeting the locales. And the whole time, she's also-- I don't know. She's-- Part of it is about heartache and part of it is about scenery and part of it is about the social condition of Europe and she's, you know, constantly looking for signs of whether what she thought about the French revolution, like what she wrote about the French revolution-- is it, you know ,-- are her claims being strengthened or weakened by what she sees around her. But you just feel this total texture of human experience that-- with the place where she was and the reason that she was there and the people who are with her and like her thoughts about her job are all just mixed together. >> Teddy Wayne is a business writer and a humor writer, both skills that have served him well in his debut novel, Kapitoil, which tells the story of a Middle Eastern immigrant with a computer program that can predict the oil market. >> His name is Karim issar. He comes from Doha, Qatar. He comes to Wall Street in 1999. Karim has learned English through the worlds of finance and technology, so his voice is very much inflected by business jargon obviously, capitalist [ unk ]. Everything is a skill set. I will leverage my experiences to reach a short- term goal. Compartments of technological, mathematical language as well. >> Kapitoil is heralded as a book that implodes the post- 9 / 11 genre of novels, but Wayne set it 1999 which can be seen as a time of innocence or a time of ignorance. >> Ricky Martin was big. That's scary moment for all of us. >> His first summer pick also heralds from that decade when tennis star, Andre Agassi, was at the top of his game. In his memoir, Open, Agassi tells a different story. >> You don't need to be a tennis player to enjoy this book. It's not about his tennis career. It's not about sports. It's about piecing together his life. He was a very confused child. He had an abusive relationship with his father. He hated tennis. The running theme of the book is his contradictions and Agassi, the biggest one of which is that he mastered the game he despised. >> Gary Shteyngart was recently selected as one of the New Yorker's top 20 writers under 40. But he's also showing up on a lot of recommended reading lists. His third novel, Super Sad True Love Story, is one of the most anticipated books of the summer. >> Shteyngart waits all year to dive into summer reading. >> Well, because I teach creative writing, I don't get to read anything during the nine months that are not in the summer. So, I am mostly reading the works of my students which can be good, you know. It can be exciting. But the summer, it all just crashes into just one giant read. >> What are you looking forward to? What's the picnic this summer? >> I do like dystopia a lot in the summer because everything is so perfect and I just can't live without kind of happy perfection. You know, the birds are out, the bees are out. It's too much. So, I like to re- read George Orwell's Nine Eighty- Four. It is a love story and summer does excite the senses a little bit. So, you combine love and dystopia and-- >> What's summer without a little romance? 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