Have you ever wondered what famous and successful people read? How about our former Presidents? What made them who they are?
George Washington valued books and owned books about every available subject. He had over 1200 publications. He read Don Quixote and The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy. He read books about politics, warfare, and practical matters. His love of books on agriculture was well known. He owned a huge farm.
No one knows what his favorite book was, but some have guessed it was one of the books on agriculture.
Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to John Adams in 1815, “I cannot live without books.” Nowadays, we probably can’t live without our computers and our phones. That might not be an improvement.
James Madison once called Thomas Jefferson a “walking library.” One of the books he loved was Laurence Sterne’s 1768 novel A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy.
Jefferson liked to read classical historians like Tacitus, Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Virgil, and Horace. He loved playwrights like William Shakespeare and John Milton.
Abraham Lincoln was an avid reader who loved classical literature and world history. He said, “A capacity and taste for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.”
Lincoln read the King James Bible frequently and was a fan of Shakespeare and the Scottish poet Robert Burns.
Harry Truman was a great reader. The editor of his memoirs asked him if he reads himself to sleep at night. Truman responded, “No, young man, I like to read myself awake.”
Truman loved history and read Plutarch’s Lives, Julius Caesar’s Commentaries, Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” Everyone should read the last one.
Truman loved poets like Robert Burns, Lord Byron, and William Shakespeare. He especially loved Hamlet, King Lear, and Othello.
Dwight Eisenhower said the two most influential books in his life, other than the Bible, were On War by Carl von Clausewitz and The History of the United States by George Bancroft. Von Clausewitz is the genius if you want to understand war.
Eisenhower was a fan of Mark Twain and loved A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. The left decided we can’t read these books anymore, especially Mark Twain. They don’t want us to appreciate any European or American literature. They don’t like Mark Twain because he described how America was quite well when black Americans were treated so terribly, but Mark Twain was very pro black American, and his books showed us how cruel racism was.
Eisenhower loved western novels.
John F Kennedy read a lot from childhood, beginning with Treasure Island, The Jungle Book, and Peter Pan. As an adult, he read everything by Winston Churchill and was greatly influenced by Pilgrim’s Way. He liked Ian Fleming and who was the creator of James Bond, and loved From Russia with Love.
Jimmy Carter wrote 32 books, many of which were best sellers. He covered topics from foreign policy to religious theory, art, historical fiction, and poetry. Carter was very well read and particularly loved the 1941 book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, about Depression-era tenant farmers.
Ronald Reagan liked to read the Bible. As a child, he read That Printer of Udell about a homeless wanderer called Dick Falkner. He said he found Falkner to be a role model. He became a fan of Tom Clancy and The Hunt for Red October. He said it was the perfect yarn. It really was.
Source: History Facts dot com
