Year-End Lists

Barack Obama: Favorite Books of 2019, as posted to Twitter

[see also 2021 • 2020 • 2018]

• The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

  The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
  Shoshana Zuboff
• The Anarchy

  The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire
  William Dalrymple
• Furious Hours

  Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee
  Casey Cep
• Girl, Woman, Other
  Bernardine Evaristo
• The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee

  Native America from 1890 to the Present
  David Treuer
• How to Do Nothing

  Resisting the Attention Economy
  Jenny Odell
• Lost Children Archive
  Valeria Luiselli
• Lot
  Bryan Washington
• Normal People
  Sally Rooney
• The Orphan Master’s Son
  Adam Johnson
• The Yellow House
  Sarah M. Broom
• Say Nothing

  A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
  Patrick Radden Keefe
• Solitary

  Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement. My Story of Transformation and Hope
  Albert Woodfox
• The Topeka School
  Ben Lerner
• Trick Mirror

  Reflections on Self-Delusion
  Jia Tolentino
• Trust Exercise
  Susan Choi
• We Live in Water
  Jess Walter

For the Sports Fans

• A Different Way to Win

  Dan Rooney's Story from the Super Bowl to the Rooney Rule
  Jim Rooney
• The Sixth Man
  Andre Iguodala

And here's a reminder of books I recommended earlier this year

• American Spy
  Lauren Wilkinson
• The Education of an Idealist
  Samantha Power
• Exhalation
  Ted Chiang
• Finding My Voice

  My Journey to the West Wing and the Path Forward
  Valerie Jarrett
• Heartland

  A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth
  Sarah Smarsh
• How to Read the Air
  Dinaw Mengestu
• Inland
  Téa Obreht
• Lab Girl
  Hope Jahren
• Maid

  Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive
  Stephanie Land
• Men Without Women
  Haruki Murakami
• The Moment of Lift

  How Empowering Women Changes the World
  Melinda Gates
• The Nickel Boys
  Colson Whitehead
• Pachinko
  Min Jin Lee
• The Shadow of Sirius
  W.S. Merwin
• The Shallows

  What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
  Nicholas Carr
• Toni Morrison's collected works
• Tough Love

  My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For
  Susan Rice
• The Warmth of Other Suns

  The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
  Isabel Wilkerson
• Wolf Hall
  Hilary Mantel