Obama's summer reading list

The list of books a president reads during vacation is often parsed for meaning.

And ever since former President Bill Clinton put mystery writer Walter Mosley in the big leagues, many is the author who has dreamed of having a president board Air Force One carrying a copy of his or her book tucked under his arm.

Today, Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton volunteered -- even before anyone could ask him -- that President Obama had brought along a pile of books on his family summer vacation to Martha's Vineyard.

Among the lucky authors, I mean important books, on Obama's list: 

"The Way Home," by George Pelecanos, described on Pelecanos' website as "a brilliant new novel about fathers and sons and the dangers of modern life" by an author the Associated Press describes as "one of the most literary of America's crime writers."

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman's latest book, "Hot, Flat and Crowded," about the dangers of global warming. Subtitle: "Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America."

"Lush Life," by Richard Price, which the New York Times describes as a novel in which "class and color collide on the tangled, once tenement-lined streets of New York City's Lower East Side."

"Plainsong," by Kent Haruf, which Salon once described as an understated novel about life in the High lains that shines with a sophisticated optimism and is infused with "a quiet, almost ingenuous triumphalism."

Historian David McCullough's latest triumph on John Adams.

-- Johanna Neuman in Washington D.C. and Christi Parsons in Martha's Vineyard

Photo: President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama leaving for Martha's Vineyard with daughters Malia, right, and Sasha. Credit: Associated Press

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Comments

[W. Goobhat]

My first guess was "Rules for Radicals" by Saul Alinsky, but I am sure the president has that memorized by now.

[Richard]

Here's hoping he reads John Adams first and realizes how completely opposite he is of what the founders intended for this country and immediately resigns the presidency.

[Si]

Obama should have taken with him copies of his many purposed health care plans to read. There is more than a thousand pages. He can use his reading time to try to understand what he is trying to force on many american who like the insurance they already have. Too many people don't want his plan and think there's a better way to insure the other uninsured. If he is really going to read, his health care material is, at this time more important for him to read and understand than those books he's taking with him for show. He will not read them anyway.

[Timray]

all feelings aside...enjoy your vacation Mr. President

[Chris]

You must be kidding ? Right ? Is your love-affair with President Obama such that we will soon find out other minute trivia about his vacation ? I don't recall the LA Times ever paying attention to President Bush on vacation over such trivia, only unadulterated drivel because of your editorial staff's ideological disagreement with that President.... have you no shame ? What did Doc Holliday say in the movie "Tombstone" just before he died.... "my hypocrisy knows no bounds".... without a doubt, the LA Times is there.... you have compromised your journalistic integrity akin to the NY Times... how said, when this country needs the Press the most, the rank and file citizens of this country have none to depend on to find out the truth from this gov't.... how very, very sad...

[Ed]

It might be better if he read Troublesome Young Men, On Borrowed Time and Darkness at Noon.

[wandamae Lombardi]

Any chance we can get him to read a book about socialized medicine and what it can do to a country like America?

[Frieda]

I suggest instead of reading these books he reads the health care bill so he will know what he is talking about and maybe be able to explain us what is really in there.

[Elise Mills]

Too bad he's reading Friedman - better that he were reading Krugman or
Stiglitz -

[thomas L. seim]

There is a picture of Obama walking with a book in his hand titled "Post America" The world aftyer America dies by a muslim author

[steve rodriguez]

Obama how bout a stay-cation?