March 26, 2015
Political leaders with an intellectual bent usually gravitate towards reading history, often biographies of political figures that they admire or identify with. A smaller number are also drawn towards the arts. George Washington had his favorite play, Joseph Addison’s Tragedy of Cato—about the Roman leader who chooses death over captivity—performed at Valley Forge. Richard Nixon named Tolstoy as his favorite author and George H. Bush War and Peace as his favorite book. John Kennedy and Albert Gore cited Stendhal’s The Red and the Black, the French 19th century novel about the young ambitious Julien Sorel, among their favorites. Senator Robert Kennedy turned to the Greek tragedies after his brother’s assassination.
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