Examining the reading habits of the president of the United States, the most powerful man in the free world, gives us some insight into the quality of his thinking, his comfort level with complex ideas, and the depth of his curiosity about the world around him.
"Send me a man who reads," was the slogan for a print ad for the company International Paper in the 1960s that I remember seeing in Reader's Digest, underscoring the need for literate, thoughtful, and broad-minded individuals in the business world as well as in politics and the arts.
Reading about the reading habits of John F. Kennedy and Donald Trump in two recently published books, I became aware of the sharp contrast between the two men.
In Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian by Richard Aldous (Norton, 2017), JFK is described by Aldous as a man who "maintained a keen interest in history throughout his life." His wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, is quoted as saying that Kennedy"would read walking, he'd read at the table, at meals, he read after dinner, he'd read in the bathtub."
"Jacqueline," writes Aldous," [recalled] how Kennedy each Sunday would circle the new books in the New York Times Sunday Book Review that he wanted to read."
Contrast that image of Kennedy with that of Trump, who, writes Michael Wolff in his book,Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House (Holt, 2018), "didn't read. He didn't really even skim. If it was print, it might as well not exist...Some thought him dyslexic;certainly his comprehension was limited. Others concluded that he didn't read because he just didn't have to, and that in fact this was one of his key attributes as a populist. He was postliterate--total television."
His lack of interest in reading may explain the numerous spelling and grammar errors found in a letter he sent to a former South Carolina English teacher, Yvonne Mason, who posted it on Facebook, which went viral, and sent it back to the White House with corrections in purple ink. "If it had been written in middle school," said Ms. Mason, in a news report (Metro New York, May 30, 2018), "I'd give it a C or C-plus. If it had been written in high school, I'd give it a D."
In summation, a tale of two presidents: one who immersed himself in books and one who doesn't.
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