As we bid President Obama farewell, we also say goodbye to one of the most prodigious readers ever to hold the office of the presidency. The San Francisco Chronicle recently reflected on Obama’s legacy as “Reader in Chief.” But perhaps President Obama said it best himself:
“When I think about how I understand my role as citizen,” Obama said, “setting aside being president, and the most important set of understandings that I bring to that position of citizen, the most important stuff I’ve learned I think I’ve learned from novels.
“It has to do with empathy,” he continued. “It has to do with being comfortable with the notion that the world is complicated and full of grays, but there’s still truth there to be found, and that you have to strive for that and work for that. And the notion that it’s possible to connect with some[one] else even though they’re very different from you.”
Explore President Obama’s reading list:
President Obama’s summer 2016 reading list: https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/08/12/presidents-summer-reading-list
President Obama’s “essential” reads: https://www.wired.com/2016/10/president-obama-reading-list/
Or take an NYUSPS literature course in spring 2017:
Eyes on the Prize: Pulitzer-Winning Plays of the 21st Century
Kafka and Company: Art or Life
Literature and Medicine: Reading and Writing about Illness and Healing
Novels for a Changing America from the Great Gatsby to Bright Lights, Big City
Novels with a Social Conscience
Pots and Pens: Writing Women in Latin America
Reading the World: Selections from the New Yorker, Charlie Hebdo and Beyond
Shakespeare’s Histories: Richard II, Henry IV part 1, and Henry V