A Great Book with Barack Obama, by Barack Obama, Higher Ground | Free Audiobook
Six books that shaped a worldview, one conversation each
Six books, six conversations, and a former president who reads the way a lot of us wish we did. The premise is simple enough to be risky: take the novels that left a mark on one person's way of seeing things and talk about them with someone who knows them well.
The list is where it gets interesting. A British spy story by John le Carre sits in the same season as James Baldwin's essay on race in America, Toni Morrison shares it with Cormac McCarthy, and Marilynne Robinson is there beside Robert Penn Warren, which is not the shape of any syllabus you have ever seen. It is what one reader actually carried with him over decades, and that is exactly what makes it worth listening to: each episode hands one of those books to a different guest, and the guests are not there to agree politely. Ta-Nehisi Coates, Lauren Groff, Tom Hanks, Jill Lepore, Ben Rhodes and Percival L. Everett each bring their own angle, and the pairings are deliberate rather than decorative.
It runs 5 hours and 38 minutes across six episodes and it is an Audible Original produced with Higher Ground, the production company founded by Barack and Michelle Obama, rather than a book about books. Think of it as a series of long, unhurried conversations, each one anchored to a title you may then want to read yourself.
This is an Audible Original series rather than a book about books, and the distinction matters: there is no narrator explaining literature to you, just six unhurried conversations, each anchored to one novel. Barack Obama brings the list and the questions, and the guests bring the expertise, which is a better format than it sounds, because it means the episodes are arguments rather than summaries.
The list itself is the interesting part. It is not a syllabus or a list of the great American novels; it is what one reader actually carried with him, which is why Marilynne Robinson's Gilead sits next to John le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time, and why Cormac McCarthy and Toni Morrison are in the same season. Tom Hanks, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jill Lepore, Ben Rhodes, Percival L. Everett and Lauren Groff each take one of them, and the pairing is deliberate: Coates on Baldwin is a conversation with a real argument behind it, and a novelist like Everett reading Morrison brings something a critic would not.
What I would flag honestly is the shape of the thing rather than its content: this is five hours and thirty-eight minutes across six episodes, roughly an hour each, and it works the way a good interview series works, which is as something to listen to one episode at a time rather than straight through. If you come to it wanting a linear argument about the power of fiction, you will find six excellent conversations instead. It had its exclusive debut on Audible on 24 September 2026 and there were no listener reviews to weigh at the time of writing, so what I can vouch for is the list, the guests and the production rather than a consensus.
For anyone who has liked Obama on the page, his own A Promised Land is also on the site, and it is a very different experience: one voice, one narrative, a great deal longer. This one is better as a companion to it than as a replacement.
A Great Book with Barack Obama is an Audible Original series in which President Obama revisits six books that shaped how he sees the world, one conversation per book, with guests including Tom Hanks, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jill Lepore, Ben Rhodes, Percival L. Everett and Lauren Groff.
The reading list runs from Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time and Robert Penn Warren's All The King's Men to John le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Cormac McCarthy's All The Pretty Horses, with a different guest for each.
It runs 5 hrs and 38 mins across six episodes, produced by Audible with Higher Ground, the company founded by Barack and Michelle Obama. With the free trial, you can pick any title you want, this one included, cancel whenever you like, and the audiobook stays in your library after the trial ends.
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