Barack Obama's 2023 Summer Reading List Is Here

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As has become annual tradition, former president Barack Obama has shared his annual summer reading list, which he's done nearly every year since his first summer in office in 2009. While there's much speculation on what goes into creating these lists, Eric Schultz, a senior advisor to Obama, told Esquire, "These lists come from him. This is not a staff-led exercise, and I think if it was, it wouldn’t pass the smell test. These lists wouldn’t be as salient or get as much traction if it wasn’t coming from him directly."

"Here’s some books that I’m reading this summer. Check them out and let me know what I should be reading next," Obama posted on social media. Below, a guide to the six novels and three works of nonfiction that Obama recommends you read this summer. (After, check out T&C's summer reading picks!)

Hello Beautiful (Oprah's Book Club): A Novel

Ann Napolitano's homage to Little Women focuses on four Italian-American sisters living in Chicago in the the 1960s and beyond. After William, a Northwestern basketball player with a tragic past, marries Julia, the eldest of the four sisters, he struggles with her expectations for him. We won't spoil anymore—but this is a book that grabs you by the shoulders and doesn't let go.

What Napoleon Could Not Do: A Novel

What Napoleon Could Not Do is a family saga set in both Ghana and America. Jacob, an awkward computer programmer, still lives at home and is yearning to get a visa to the U.S.; whereas his sister Belinda has already made it to America, where she married a wealthy Black Texan named Wilder, who is a Vietnam vet. Told through the perspectives of Jacob, Belinda, and Wilder, DK Nnuro's debut novel is about the American dream and the "fundamental dissonance," as he says, of the term African-American.

Birnam Wood: A Novel

The title of Eleanor Catton's thrilling novel comes from Macbeth, when the witches tell Macbeth that he will be king "until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsiane hill shall come against him." In Birnam Wood, a guerrilla gardening collective takes its name from this Shakespeare woods. When a landslide cuts off the town of Throndike in New Zealand, the group decides to occupy a farm, where they inadvertently cross paths with a mysterious American billionaire. It is an intricately crafted novel—and one that deals with the timely issues of climate change and the greed of the wealthiest people.

Small Mercies: A Novel

One night in 1974 Boston amidst a heatwave, Mary Pat Fennessy's teenager daughter disappears. The same night, a young Black man is found dead under mysterious circumstances. Mary Pat sets out to find her missing daughter, putting her in direct conflict with Marty Butler, the head of Southie's Irish mob. It's a thriller, yes, but it's so much more than that, as Mary Pat's search for her daughter takes place in the context of the violence that arose as Boston desegregated its public schools.

Poverty, by America

Matthew Desmond, a sociologist who won a Pulitzer Prize for his book Evicted, returns with an investigation into poverty in America. He also makes a case for eliminating it—calling upon his readers to become poverty abolitionists, "unwinding ourselves from our neighbors' deprivation and refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor."

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

David Grann, the author of Killers of the Flower Moon (soon to be a major motion picture), returns with a compelling tale of shipwreck and survival. In sum: on January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel washed up on the coast of Brazil, holding 30 survivors of the shipwreck of a British vessel that left England in 1740. Six months later, another boat lands on the coast of Chile, with just three castaways—who told a very different tale: that the first group of men were mutineers.

Blue Hour: A Novel

Tiffany Clarke Harrison's debut novel is narrated by an unnamed Black Japanese photographer and teacher who is ambivalent about motherhood, but her white Jewish husband wants them to keep trying for a baby. After one of her photography students, a young Black boy named Noah, is shot by police, she starts to question whether or not she wants to bring a baby into this world. She starts working on a documentary project about motherhood and visiting Noah in the hospital as she grapples with big questions about her future as a mom.

King: A Life

Jonathan Eig's King: A Life is a comprehensive biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., the first such work to include recently declassified FBI files. As the publisher writes, "In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime."

All the Sinners Bleed: A Novel

In All the Sinners Bleed, Titus Crown becomes the first Black sheriff in the history of Charon County, Virginia. A year after Titus's election, a school teacher is killed by a former student, then cops shoot the student. As Titus, a former FBI agent, begins to investigate, he discovers a serial killer in the small Virginia town who has been hiding in plain sight. A heart-pounding police procedural that Stephen King praised as "fresh and exhilarating."

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