Barack Obama has offered some top-notch Summer book recommendations over the past 10 years, and we're steadily making our way through them all. His most recent compilation features the work of Toni Morrison, as well as Ted Chiang and Haruki Murakami. But his picks from years past — including Michael Ondaatje's Warlight and Paula Hawkins's The Girl on the Train — are also worth a read. If you're looking to expand your book collection, we've assembled every captivating title from all of the former president's Summer reading lists!
Plainsong by Kent Haruf ($15, originally $16)
John Adams by David McCullough ($16, originally $20)
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen ($17, originally $18)
Tinkers by Paul Harding ($17)
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson ($15, originally $18)
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese ($14, originally $17)
The Bayou Trilogy by Daniel Woodrell ($16, originally $17)
Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra ($16, originally $17)
Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín ($6, originally $16)
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande ($14, originally $17)
Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos ($15, originally $16)
The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert ($15, originally $18)
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates ($16, originally $26)
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri ($15, originally $16)
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr ($12, originally $17)
Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow ($18, originally $22)
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan ($15, originally $18)
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe ($11, originally $13)
A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong'o ($16, originally $17)
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ($13, originally 16)
The Return by Hisham Matar ($16, originally $17)
The World As It Is by Ben Rhodes ($17, originally $18)
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead ($15, originally $25)
Exhalation by Ted Chiang ($21, originally $26)
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel ($16, originally $18)
Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami ($14, originally $16)
American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson ($24, originally $27)
The Shallows by Nicholas Carr ($14, originally $16)
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren ($13, originally $16)
Inland by Téa Obreht ($20, originally $27)
How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu ($14, originally $15)
Maid by Stephanie Land ($22, originally $27)