Presidential Library

Nobody asked but …

Pursuant to a query on Facebook, books that I would hope POTUS (any POTUS) would read, before being in office or during, and why:

• All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren — a cautionary tale about hubris.  Many of Shakespeare‘s tragedies (King Lear, Richard III, Hamlet, Othello, MacBeth) or various iterations of Faust or Don Juan would work.
• Human Action, by Ludwig von Mises, is the best economics book.
• The Law, by Frédéric Bastiat, is the best legal book.
• Two Treatises of Government, by John Locke, and No Treason, by Lysander Spooner, are the best political books.
• The Allegory of the Cave, by Plato, is the best philosophical work.
• Don Quixote, by Cervantes, and Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, are the best books on the absurdity of life.

— Kilgore Forelle