Former President of the United States of America, Barack Obama is an avid reader and he regularly shares his book recommendations with fellow readers.
In a recent podcast with The New York Times, Obama was asked by journalist Ezra Klein for his three book recommendations for this summer.
Here’s an eclectic book list the former president and author of ‘A Promised Land’ suggested everyone to read this summer:

1.
‘The Overstory’ by Richard PowersRichard Powers won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for ‘The Overstory’.
The novel is about five trees and their unique experiences with nine Americans which brings them together to save forests from destruction.
Recommending ‘The Overstory’, Barack Obama said, “I just read ‘The Overstory’ by Richard Powers, it’s about trees and the relationship of humans to trees…
It’s not something I would have immediately thought of, but a friend gave it to me.
And I started reading it, and it changed how I thought about the earth.
And it changed how I see things, and that’s always, for me, a mark of a book worth reading.”
The book was also recommended by Bill Gates in a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) this year.
2.
‘Memorial Drive’ by Natasha Trethewey
Natasha Trethewey’s bestselling book ‘Memorial Drive’ is a chilling memoir of a daughter coming to terms with her mother’s brutal murder by her former stepfather.
“It’s a meditation on race, and class, and grief, uplifting surprisingly, at the end of it but just wrenching,” Obama said in the podcast.
Interestingly, Obama had also selected ‘Memorial Drive’ by Natasha Trethewey as one of his favorite books of 2020.
3
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Mark Twain’s booksBarack Obama also suggested readers revisit Mark Twain’s classics this summer.
Calling Twain the “most essential of American writers”, Obama said, “There’s his satiric eye and his actual outrage that sometimes gets buried under the comedy I thought was useful to revisit.” Some of Mark Twain’s popular works are: ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’, ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’, ‘The Gilded Age’ and his autobiography among others.
Which book are you reading this summer? Tell us in the comments below!