Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2022

"I always look forward to sharing my lists of favorite books, movies, and music with all of you.   First up, here are some of the books I read and enjoyed this year."
Updated January 3, 2023
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Sea of Tranquility
Emily St. John Mandel
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years...
Trust
Hernan Diaz
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022 LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 BOOKER PRIZE "Buzzy and...
Black Cake
Charmaine Wilkerson
Paper Book
NOW A HULU STREAMING SERIES * NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY * Two estranged siblings delve into their mother's hidden past--and how it all connects to her traditional Caribbean black cake--in this immersive family saga, "a...
The Candy House
Jennifer Egan
Paper Book
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ONE of the TOP 10 BOOKS OF THE YEAR by THE NEW YORK TIMES * ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY * SLATE* THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER * Also named one of the BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR by Vanity Fair, Time, NPR, The...
An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
Ed Yong
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A "thrilling" (The New York Times), "dazzling" (The Wall Street Journal) tour of the radically different ways that animals perceive the world that will fill you with wonder and forever alter your perspective, by Pulitzer Prize-winning science...
The School for Good Mothers
Jessamine Chan
Paper Book
Longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel Longlisted for the 2023 Carnegie Medal for Excellence Shortlisted for The Center for Fiction 2022 First Novel Prize Selected as One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2022! In...
The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
Michelle Obama
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER * In an inspiring follow-up to her acclaimed memoir Becoming, former First Lady Michelle Obama shares practical wisdom and powerful strategies for staying hopeful and balanced in today's highly uncertain world.<...
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands
Kate Beaton
Paper Book
A New York Times Notable book! One of Barack Obama's favorite books of 2022! Winner of Canada Reads 2023! "An exceptionally beautiful book about loneliness, labor, and survival."--Carmen Maria Machado Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times...
Liberation Day: Stories
George Saunders
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "One of our most inventive purveyors of the form returns with pitch-perfect, genre-bending stories that stare into the abyss of our national character. . . . An exquisite work from a writer whose reach is galactic."--Oprah Daily  
The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams
Stacy Schiff
Paper Book
This "glorious" revelatory biography from a Pulitzer Prize winner is about the most essential Founding Father (Ron Chernow)--the one who stood behind the change in thinking that produced the American Revolution. Thomas Jefferson asserted that if there was any leader of the...
South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
Imani Perry
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE 2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "An elegant meditation on the complexities of the American South--and thus of America--by an esteemed daughter of the South and one of the great intellectuals of our time. An inspiration." -...
Afterlives
Abdulrazak Gurnah
Paper Book
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022 A NEW YORKER "ESSENTIAL READ" A NATIONAL BESTSELLER NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, THE NEW YORKER, BOOKPAGE, AND KIRKUS...
The Furrows
Namwali Serpell
Paper Book
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award * One of the New York Times' Ten Best Books of the Year * Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize "A triumph."--New York Magazine From one of the most celebrated new voices in...

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