Furthermore: Where the Headlines Take You

Presidential Reading

Presidents, like other famous people, have an incredible ability to influence popular culture. Their habits are imitated, their favorite foods see renewed popularity, their taste in music is noted and critiqued. And president-elect Barack Obama is no exception – the media has noted possible trends springing from, for example, his devotion to his smartphone and his patronage of D.C.-area restaurants. What's the newest presidential trend?  NPR's Morning Edition ran a story this morning about the influence of the president-elect on America's reading habits. It seems that Obama likes to read – lots of different kinds of books*, pretty much all the time. And Americans are jumping right on the reading bandwagon with him!

Of course librarians are always glad to hear that someone influential is promoting reading (we're not territorial; we love it when anyone gives reading props!), so I was glad to hear that Obama's reading habits are making news. And this got me wondering about other presidents. Surely a fair number of them have been avid readers also, right?

It turns out the answer is yes. Our sixteenth president, Abraham Lincoln, is perhaps best known for his skill as an orator, but throughout his life he was a devoted reader as well. Elizabeth Van Steenwyk and Bill Farnsworth's When Abraham Talked to the Trees tells the story of young Lincoln's passion for literature, learning, and the art of oration in a beautiful picture book format. Farnsworth's oil paintings are evocative and warm – this would be a great choice to read aloud to children or adults.

When we think of our most intellectual presidents, Thomas Jefferson nearly always makes the list. Kevin J. Hayes's The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson lays out the story of what the third president read and how it affected him, and describes in detail the libraries Jefferson built over the years, including the one he eventually sold to the nation to form the foundation for the Library of Congress. Hayes draws from a wide array of source material, including the marginalia that Jefferson inscribed in his books as he read, and the result is an unusual portrait of a serious thinker and lover of literature.

* The article mentioned several books that Barack Obama has been seen reading in recent months, all of which are available at your library!

• The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, by Jonathan Alter
• FDR, by Jean Edward Smith
• Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, by Fred Kaplan
• Selected Poems, by Derek Walcott
• Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution, by Thomas L. Friedman
• Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
• Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson
• Moby Dick, by Herman Melville

And what about the rest of the first family? It seems they're readers too! The article shows a photograph of the president-elect with his daughter Malia, and the book she was reading at the time: Outside Beauty, by Cynthia Kadohata.