Presidential Reading

Whenever a new President is elected (or re-elected) there are folks out there who are sure that the new national administrator would do a much better job, if only they read certain books.

[Hint: If you do a Google search under “books the new president should read” you come up with a long list of recommendations from quite a number of people.]

Here is a list from the Washington Monthly.

Bill Moyers, on his journal on PBS, asked for suggestions from the public and there is a very long list of required reading for President Obama.

Tim Weiner, author of Legacy of Ashes (a history of the CIA) and a 2007 National Book Award winner, lists five important books for the new President to consider.

And there are even suggestions for the next science books the President should read from Nature: The International Weekly Journal of Science.

Four books that many lists seem to have in common are:

The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, by Jane Mayer

An Inconvenient Truth, by Al Gore

The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam by Barbara W. Tuchman

and finally, a few books by the late, great George Orwell were mentioned, including 1984, Animal Farm and the Collected Essays.

What would you recommend? Meg