Getting to Know You

If you are trying to get to know our new president, reading his books would be a good place to start. The library has Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope in a variety of formats, including downloadable e-books and the Grammy-winning audiobooks. We even have The Audacity of Hope in Spanish! We also have Barack Obama: Speeches 2002-2006 and last year's Change We Can Believe In: Barack Obama's Plan to Renew America's Promise, which is also available in downloadable and audiobook form.

If you have read those, or you prefer a different route, what better way to get to know how somebody thinks than to read the books that they read? During the primaries, then-Senator Obama was spotted carrying Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World, a book about the shifting balance of power as countries like China, India, and Brazil gain influence.

A list compiled by AbeBooks.com gives the titles W.E.B. DuBois' Souls of Black Folk, Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory and The Quiet American, Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook, Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (also a favorite of Senator McCain), and John Steinbeck's In Dubious Battle among books that our new president has listed as significant for him. Shakespeare and Mark Twain are also among his favorite authors.

- Kristen, Main Library