Skip to main content

Obama's summer Reading List


I see The Warmth of Other Suns made it on Obama's reading list, but apparently it was the only non-fiction book he picked out for the summer.  Others included The Bayou Triology and Rodins' Debutante.  Once again, the Republicans accuse the President of being out of touch with the electorate by vacationing on Martha's Vineyard, where he is pretty much cloistered from prying eyes.  You can read more here.

Comments

  1. This is a wonderful book. And unlike the book on Henrietta Lacks, which I read around the same time, she is completely sympathetic (or empathetic?) with her "informants."

    Speaking of sympathetic, I have no problem with the choice of Martha's Vineyard although it does seem to be slightly tone deaf with the rest of the country. But it's small enough that he can walk around downtown with the kids, which seems to be a major consideration. And my guess is they like that. Better than the fake vacation "ranch" that Bush Jr. had. Talk about a scam arist.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yea, I think he bought that "ranch" in 2000.

    I imagine Obama has chosen MV as much for its relative isolation as the Kennedy and Clinton legacies.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I thought Bush Jr. sold his ranch after he moved to Dallas, but I guess he held on to it. He even visited at least once since 2008 to ride his bike. So I guess it wasn't all just ranch hand optics -- although I still think he bought it after he was elected because Rove told him to.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Strange how the right objects to Obama's hiatus, but continually defended Bush and Reagan's prolonged vacation times. Those two took far more time off from the White House but, as usual, it's OK when a Republican does it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Yeah, the elite have "earned" it. Obama needs to work twice as hard because, well, you know, he's not one of us.

    This reminds me of one of the stories related in the bio of his mother, about how the young Barry would skip along while Indonesian kids would throw rocks at him and call him racist names. To which his mother would reply, it's okay, he's used to it.

    Obama is taking ten days with his family. Bush used to take the entire month of August off -- in fact, it was on August 6, 2001, that he was warned that "bin Laden determined to strike in the US."

    I guess he was too busy relaxing to worry too much about it.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Saw an article on this the other day where it stated that Obama had taken like 62 vaction days as opposed to 180 for Bush at the same point in time.Not sure that was the exact amount but it was quite a difference.9bosox)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Bush took a lot of heat for his vacations as well, but then he started inviting heads of state to his "ranch," and it was soon dubbed "White House West," or something like that. Convenient way to make it look like you are "working."

    Of course, Bush never really worked a day in his life. Everything was handed to him. It was a nice cakewalk.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Obama doesn't even own a vacation home, let alone a ranch. Remember Reagan's ranch?

    ReplyDelete
  9. Do you remember that W.'s people released official vacation reading lists? I thought Obama did that the first year. All I'm seeing now are accounts of what he bought at a particular book store in Martha's Vineyard.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

The Age of Roosevelt: The Crisis of the Old Order

A quarter of a century, however, is time enough to dispel some of the myths that have accumulated around the crisis of the early Thirties and the emergence of the New Deal. There is, for example, the myth that world conditions rather than domestic errors and extravagances were entirely responsible for the depression. There is the myth that the depression was already over, as a consequence of the ministrations of the Hoover Administration, and that it was the loss of confidence resulting from the election of Roosevelt that gave it new life. There is the myth that the roots of what was good in the New Deal were in the Hoover Administration - that Hoover had actually inaugurated the era of government responsibility for the health of the economy and the society. There is the contrasting myth (for myths do not require inner consistency) that the New Deal was alien in origins and in philosophy; that - as Mr. Hoover put it - its philosophy was "the same philosophy of government which...