Recommended Reading for President-Elect Barack Obama
 - Reporting the Universe
- E. L. Doctorow
- Doctorow was Obama’s favorite author (pre-Shakespeare) and here he takes on human consciousness, personal history, American literature, religion, and politics.
 - Playing in the Dark
- Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
- Toni Morrison
- Another author Obama admires, the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison here writes a personal inquiry into the significance of African-Americans in the American literary imagination.
 - Lincoln and the Court
- Brian McGinty
- Obama is a great fan of Lincoln and his biographies. This book dubs Lincoln the most “lawyerly” president in history, and explores his relationship to the Supreme Court.
 - Worst Case Scenarios
- Cass R. Sunstein
- Sunstein and Obama taught together at Chicago Law School and remain friends. Sunstein here explores suitcase bombs, anthrax, meteors, and other worst-case scenarios and how we might best prevent them.
 - The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets
- Helen Vendler
- While Obama also favors Hemingway, he considers Shakespeare his literary hero. This is an incomparable guide to some of the best-loved poems in the English language.
Recommended Reading for John McCain
 - An Instinct for War
- Scenes from the Battlefields of History
- Roger Spiller
- “Imagine...travel[ling] in time to past and future wars. That's what...[Spiller] does in his imaginative collection...[His stories] neither celebrate nor condemn war but raise fundamental questions faced by soldiers and civilians.”—USA Today
 - Failing to Win
- Perceptions of Victory and Defeat in International Politics
- Johnson and Tierney
- Touching on David Halberstam, whom McCain recently read, this book dissects the psychological factors that predispose leaders, media, and the public to perceive outcomes as victories or defeats.
 - The Echo of Battle
- The Army’s Way of War
- Brian McAllister Linn
- Citing Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, a McCain favorite, this book surveys the past assumptions—and errors—that underlie the army’s many visions of warfare up to the present day.
 - Adam’s Fallacy
- A Guide to Economic Theology
- Duncan K. Foley
- Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations is McCain’s economic Bible. “Simultaneously an introduction to [Smith’s] economic theory and a critique of it.”
—New York Times
 - Hemingway
- Kenneth S. Lynn
- Ernest Hemingway is McCain’s favorite author, including Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls. “One of the most brilliant and provocative literary biographies in recent memory.”—New York Times Book Review.
To learn more about the candidates’ favorite authors, visit Book Patrol on McCain and Obama, this Chicago Tribune article, the Guardian [UK]’s take, this New York Times blog, and a Salon.com’s feature.
The preceding links are provided by news organizations not affiliated with Harvard University Press
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