There are three fiction and three non-fiction books on the list, but it's the non-fiction books that are perhaps most revealing about his presidency. They include Ta-Nehisi Coates' meditation on race in America, Elizabeth Kolbert's influential book on the effect of climate change, and Ron Chernow's definitive biography of George Washington.

 The list:
• All That Is, by James Salter
• All The Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr
• The Sixth Extinction, by Elizabeth Kolbert
• The Lowland, by Jhumpa Lahiri
• Between The World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Washington: A Life, by Ron Chernow

 Like most of us, Obama presumably has a stack of nightstand books we keep meaning to get around to: We know that he's owned at least two of these books since Christmas, 2013, when he was seen buying them during a trip to the Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington.