photo credit: NorthJoe
Well, I realize I am half-way through Cleveland.com’s Best Fall Picks, but in honor of tomorrow’s election, I decided to sneak in a list of what the candidates list as their “must reads.” Amazon has even created a page so that you, too, can create your own Presidential Library.
Here are their choices:
Both Obama and McCain: For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Obama:
The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Self-Reliance and Other Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1932-1858
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63 
Moby-Dick: or, The Whale by Herman Melville
Tragedies: Volume I by William Shakespeare
McCain:
Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu by Bernard Fall
War and Remembrance by Herman Wouk
King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green
The Winds of War by Herman Wouk
The Best American Short Stories of the Century by Katrina Kenison
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History by T. R. Fehrenbach
If you have a minute, check out this recent essay in the New York Times about why the candidates have chosen their picks.
How nice that both candidates read such a variety of literature and nonfiction…!
