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Which Five Books Should a Candidate Read?July 10, 2008 If you haven't seen Laura Miller's "Barack by the Books" from Monday's Salon.com, take a look. She offers a very interesting "read" of a man by his own book choices, and those that influenced society around him as his career progressed. "If Obama is elected, he'll be one of the most literary presidents in recent memory," Miller writes. She also notes that "A taste for serious fiction is rare in the American male these days, but Obama has it."Since I try, following Annie Dillard's lead, to "live by fiction," these sentences got me thinking about what fiction would be most helpful to a presidential candidate. I decided that since the candidates are busy people, I'd keep my list short: five titles. What could teach him -- OR HER! -- something about how to navigate election year, how to develop compassion, how to remember roots but also grow wings? (OK, I've been reading too many greeting cards lately.) The first book that jumped to my mind was Moby Dick. Ha! All I could think was, the campaign is a white whale...it'll bite off your leg if you're not careful. Another book in the realm of the obvious would be All the King's Men, for a lesson in how quickly and absolutely political success can change you. Not for its Christian overtones, but for its overarching battle between good and evil: The Idiot. Any presidential candidate has to consider both town and country, and one of the best novels I know for examining the tensions between those demographics is Wise Blood. Finally, because even candidates need something current to talk about at cocktail parties, and because if this doesn't teach them compassion, nothing will -- my current favorite, Say You're One of Them. What five books would you recommend to a presidential candidate? Yours don't have to be fiction; they could be all nonfiction, or a mix. I'd love to hear them; maybe I can compile them and convince the Library of Congress to post them somewhere... Posted by Bethanne Patrick on July 10, 2008 | Comments (4)
July 10, 2008
In response to: Which Five Books Should a Candidate Read? Joel commented: First I'd have him/her read the poem "Things Fall Apart" by Yeats, the book is appropriate too but not neccessarily on my reading list. Next "Hard Times" by Dickens to remind him/her what can happen to good people when business runs amok. Moby Dick is a good treatise on the dangers of pride but as it's already been recommended, "Paradise Lost" by Milton. "All Quiet on the Western Front" by Remarque should be required reading for anyone can who send people into battle. Finally I would have them read Wolfe's "The Right Stuff" to remind them of what America was and could be again if we only dare to dream
July 10, 2008
In response to: Which Five Books Should a Candidate Read? Katie commented: More than anything, candidates need to know what's going on outside of their particular bubble. I would recommend (1) Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol; (2) Amazing Grace by Jonathan Kozol; (3) Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser; (4) Backlash by Susan Faludi (5) The End of Oil or any other book on fossil fuel dependence and/or environmental issues in general. In fact, I'd recommend these books to ANY politician at the national or state level, where the big decisons get made.
July 11, 2008
In response to: Which Five Books Should a Candidate Read? Kat Brokaw commented: More than any other book in the world, any person who aspires to politics should be forced to read Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker series. Very few understood politics with the raw truth of this dearly lamented man.
July 11, 2008
In response to: Which Five Books Should a Candidate Read? Christine commented: Plato's Republic
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