Books Every U.S. President Should Read

This is going to be one of those posts that evolves over time, so don’t judge it by the content you see here today, because it might be different tomorrow. What this post contains is a list of books which, according to my opinion, every US President should have already read prior to entering office. But since I am reading new books all the time and reforming my opinions on books I’ve already read as I read contradictory or clarifying material, the list will, as a matter of course, be updated regularly. They are presented below, with or without explanation, in no particular order other than in the various categories to which I’ve assigned them.

I welcome your criticism of any books on this list, since it is not my desire to push any viewpoint that is untrue, but only those rooted in fact. And of course, feel free to recommend any books you think should be added to the list.

Must-Reads. These are books I believe are critical for a US President to have read. I have no reason to question the content of the books on any substantial level, and I do not believe the content of these books will become outdated anytime in the next 10 years.

• If not specifically listed below, I believe every US President should have read at least one biography of every US President to precede them, especially of those Presidents who presided over wars or other crises.
• If not specifically listed below, every US President should have read just about anything written by any of the Founding Fathers.

• John Adams, David McCullough
• 1984, George Orwell – If you’re not consciously working to move the country away from this type of society, how do you know you’re not working us towards it?
• Animal Farm, George Orwell – Beware of power and those who say they want it to do good.
• Brave New World, Aldous Huxley – What is the purpose of human life?
• The Reagan Diaries, Ronald Reagan
• The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
• Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
• 1776, David McCullough
• Left to Tell, Immaculee Ilibagiza
• The Innovator’s Prescription, Clayton Christensen – If there’s one book that can tell us how to reform health care, this is it.
• The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton Christensen
• The Innovator’s Solution, Clayton Christensen
• Leadership and Self-Deception, The Arbinger Group
• Parenting with Love and Logic, Foster W. Cline – The more our country becomes a nanny-state, the more important this book becomes.
• Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls, Noel M. Tichy
• Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, Larry Bossidy
• The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith – I don’t necessarily recommend it for reading (it’s extremely tedious reading) but any President should know what’s in it and understand the content.
• The Bible
• The Qur’an
• Good to Great, Jim Collins
• Enough, Juan Williams – Solutions for helping all racial minorities.
• Free to Choose, Milton Friedman
• The Federalist Papers
• Common Sense, Thomas Paine
• The FairTax Book, John Linder, Neal Boortz – I’m not saying I’m convinced the FairTax is the way to go, but I think it bears serious consideration, as do other ideas for tax reform.
• FairTax: the Truth, Neal Boortz – Ditto.
• The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli
• The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon
• The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, John Maynard Keynes
• Mornings on Horseback, David McCullough
• Truman, David McCullough
• The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx
• Mein Kampf, Adolph Hitler
• The Road to Serfdom, FA Hayek
• Lord of the Flies, William Golding
• The 4-Hour work Week, Timothy Ferris
• Fahrenheit 451,Ray Bradbury

Conditional Must-Reads. These are books which, at face value, I would say are must-reads, except for various reasons. One is that I may have some questions as to their credibility. This may be due to questions I have about the authors’ backgrounds or facts in the books themselves. If they had been substantially discredited they wouldn’t be here at all, so I’m not saying they won’t make it to the must-read list someday, but for the moment I don’t feel I can put them on the same level as the must-read list. I may also place books here if they are one of many books to cover a particular topic, and having not yet read all of them, I am at a loss to declare which book(s) may be the best to be on the must-read list. For example, there are many biographies of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, but I have not read enough of them to say which one(s) I would recommend.

• A. Lincoln, a Biography, Ronald C. White, Jr.
• The Indispensable Man, James Thomas Flexner
• The Forgotten Man, Amity Shlaes
• America Alone, Mark Steyn
• The 5,000 Year Leap, Cleon Skousen
• Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg
• President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination, Richard Reeves
• Freakonomics, Steven D Levitt, Stephen J Dubner
• SuperFreakonomics, Steven D Levitt, Stephen J Dubner

Helpful, if you’ve got the time. Future presidents are probably busy people, and therefore can’t read everything out there that might be helpful to them. Here are some books I believe would be helpful, but not critical, to a future US President.

• The Path Between the Seas, David McCullough
• Liberty and Tyranny, Mark Levin
• Undaunted Courage, Stephen E. Ambrose
• The Great Bridge, David McCullough
• Mayflower, Nathaniel Philbrick
• The Five Temptations of a CEO, Patrick M. Lencioni
• A Clockwork Orange, A. Burgess

Interesting, but… These books have something of value in them, even if they contain known errors, or may be outdated within a few short years. These books stand a good chance of being removed from the list.

• Nothing yet.

Potential. These are kept from anywhere else on the list only because I haven’t read them yet and do not have any basis for judgment, other than to say I think they could potentially make the list.

• Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, Michael B. Oren
• Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present, Michael Oren
• The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, Gordon S. Wood
• The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History, Gordon S. Wood
• The Radicalism of the American Revolution, Gordon S. Wood
• Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, Gordon S. Wood
• The United States: The Early Republic, Gordon S. Wood
• American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies in the Founding of the Republic, Joseph J. Ellis
• American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, Joseph J. Ellis
• Founding Brothers The Revolutionary Generation, Joseph J Ellis
• From Beirut to Jerusalem,Thomas L. Friedman
• What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East, Bernard Lewis
• The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror, Bernard W. Lewis
• The Middle East, Bernard Lewis
• The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945, Lucy S. Dawidowicz
• The Great Terror: A Reassessment, Robert Conquest
• The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine, Robert Conquest
• Gulag: A History, Anne Applebaum
• Memoirs of the Second World War, Winston S. Churchill
• A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900, Andrew Roberts
• EXODUS, Leon Uris
• The Haj, Leon Uris
• Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich, William L. Shirer
• The Keys to a Successful Presidency, Alvin Felzenberg
• ConUNdrum: The Limits of the United Nations and the Search for Alternatives, Brett D. Schaefer
• Flat Tax Revolution: Using a Postcard to Abolish the IRS, Steve Forbes
• The FairTax Fantasy, Hugh Hewitt
• The Flat Tax: Why It Won’t Work for America, Scott E. Hicko
• How The Mighty Fall, Jim Collins
• Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief, James M. McPherson
• Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman
• Come On People, Bill Cosby
• Economic Facts and Fallacies, Thomas Sowell
• The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom
• The Republic, Plato
• A World Lit Only by Fire, William Manchester
• Disrupting Class, Clayton Christensen