Inaugural books: be like Barack

January 19, 3:39 PMChicago Literary Scene ExaminerRobert Duffer

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(Image from TimeOut Chicago, by Martha Williams)

In an election day post, I may have expressed my relief and optimism in having such an articulate President replace such a fool blunderbuss. 

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, written when Obama was 33 and the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, was followed up with The Audacity of Hope, his mantra borrowed from an influential if not prickly pastor and cementing him in the national spotlight after the 2004 DNC. Sure, the Presidential dude can write, but what does he read?

TimeOut Chicago Books Editor Jonathan Messinger had an insightful piece in the latest Obamaniac issue of TimeOut. It's breif enough to post in full:

"Maybe it’s because he’s the first President to enter the White House with two best-selling books and two spoken-word Grammys for his audiobooks. Or maybe it’s because the last time W declared he was reading a book, he namechecked The Stranger, which some found to be ill-timed, given the book is about murdering an Arab without provocation. Regardless, bookish types the world over want to know what Obama is reading, so here’s a survey of what he’s quoted or been seen with of late, so you can read along with the Obama book club.

• In May 2008, he was spotted reading Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World (Norton, $25.95)—a book about the “rise of the rest” of the world’s superpowers—which helped stir up the “he’s anti-American” hooey.

• Doris Kearns Goodwin could buy a house with the number of Team of Rivals (Penguin, $21) copies she’s sold thanks to Barack. The book, which looks at how Lincoln took opponents into his cabinet, has been cited by Obama and every other living person as a major influence on his cabinet assembly.

• On a 60 Minutes spot after his win, Obama mentioned reading about FDR—later confirmed as The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope by Jonathan Alter (Simon & Schuster, $16) and FDR by Jean Edward Smith (Random House, $20).

• Recently, in Chicago, a photo of Obama showed him reading Fred Kaplan’s new Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer (Harper, $27.95)."

If Post-American World author Fareed Zakaria were born here instead of Mumbai, I'd like to see him run for high office. The book, flushed out from his Newsweek columns and reportage, is an extensive and balanced look at America's role in shifting from being a lone superpower to being more of a sort of superleader. In conversations with leaders and citizens from around the world, Zakariah gives a complete picture of how America can profit, both economically and culturally, from globalization and what he calls "the rise of the rest".  Give that man a Cabinet position. Or a junior Secretary of State position.

I wonder if Obama had a chance or will have a chance for any fiction.  Bush 'namechecking' The Stranger is too fitting. As a title, Confederacy of Dunces should no longer apply. Always a fine book, though it has less to do with politics than hotdogs.