Please excuse this bragging. EarlyWord has a note telling that the New York Times reports that President-elect Barack Obama is reading two books about Franklin Roosevelt, The Defining Moment by Jonathan Alter and FDR by Jean Edward Smith. I am happy to report that both of the books are included in my guide to biography readers' advisory, Real Lives Revealed, which should be out sometime in 2009.
It would be great for libraries if the next president continues to reveal his reading. We could make displays and print reading lists. Perhaps Oprah could get him to appear occasionally on her book programs.
It will be great to have a reader in the White House.
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3 comments:
I wonder if, earlier this year, Obama was reading Steve Neal's Happy Days Are Here Again: The 1932 Democratic Convention, the Emergence of FDR--and How America Was Changed Forever. I was reading it this spring when I thought we might have a less scripted democratic convention, but didn't quite make it through. I bring it up partly because I checked out @ your library!
I am glad that we had a book that you enjoyed. I noticed another FDR book in the tech processing room today. Traitor to his class : the privileged life and radical presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. You might like that one also.
Your statement "It will be great to have a reader in the White House" shows your ignorance and intolerance .....
According to a WSJ article by Bush friend Karl Rove, the President read the following books in 2008:
David Halberstam's "The Coldest Winter," Rick Atkinson's "Day of Battle," Hugh Thomas's "Spanish Civil War," Stephen W. Sears's "Gettysburg" and David King's "Vienna 1814." There's also plenty of biography -- including U.S. Grant's "Personal Memoirs"; Jon Meacham's "American Lion"; James M. McPherson's "Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief" and Jacobo Timerman's "Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number."
He’s not one-sided, either. Look at this list of recent fiction:
Besides eight Travis McGee novels by John D. MacDonald, Mr. Bush tackled Michael Crichton's "Next," Vince Flynn's "Executive Power," Stephen Hunter's "Point of Impact," and Albert Camus's "The Stranger," among others.
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