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Recommended Reading for President Trump [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-05-19
For nine years now, I’ve been listening and watching a good many of my compatriots hailing Donald Trump as the chosen one who has come to Make America Great Again! Over the last few weeks, as I’ve mused about what national greatness means while simultaneously gripped by growing disquiet, I have pondered a provocative question: What books should Trump read (or have read) to equip him with the historical, cultural, and economic insight to renew American “greatness”?
Though I have no expectations that he will actually read any of my suggestions—indeed, there is some indication that he simply doesn’t read anything at all—I have nevertheless curated a reading list for him that I think blends historical depth, economic acumen, cultural knowledge, and spiritual-religious discernment. You can quickly walk through it and note the reason why I think he should read each title.
I. Founding Principles and Early National Vision
The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn (1967)
Understand the moral and intellectual origins of liberty and how Enlightenment ideals, Protestant dissent, and classical republicanism shaped the American founding. Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville (1835)
Offers an enduring analyses of the American character, institutions, and the moral-spiritual foundations of liberty, with insights into the cultural habits that sustain a free republic. The American Political Tradition by Richard Hofstadter (1948)
Offers insightful and critical profiles of key American leaders and shows how cultural and economic ideas were forged, manipulated, or betrayed by different presidents and elites. The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay (1788)
Aid the understanding of the whys and hows of the constitutional architecture of American government. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (1776)
Defense of free markets, balanced by moral concern for social cohesion and national well-being (typically forgotten by modern populists and libertarians alike).
II. Cultural Identity, National Unity, and Moral Conflict
Borderlands / La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldúa (1987)
Explores life at the U.S.-Mexico border with a blend of personal narrative, poetry, and political analysis, challenging binary thinking and a nuanced form of American identity. Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America by Juan González (2000)
Provides an economic and political history of Latino populations in the U.S., including the impact of U.S. foreign policy. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 by Daniel Walker Howe (2007)
Chronicles a period of religious revival, economic modernization, and expanding democracy, showing how cultural and economic development can coexist with moral responsibility. Battle Cry of Freedom by James M. McPherson (1988)
A definitive history of the Civil War that ties together economics, slavery, nationalism, and morality, shaping a reflection on unity, justice, and the cultural consequences of unresolved contradictions. The Making of Asian America by Erika Lee (2015)
A history of Asian immigration, discrimination, and contribution to the American fabric. Counters erasure and highlights the contributions of Asian Americans over centuries. The Good Society by Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M.Tipton (1991) Challenges the myth of radical individualism and advocates for a renewal of America's civic and moral institutions, arguing that a healthy society must balance freedom with responsibility, markets with community, and individual success with social solidarity. A Dream Called Home by Reyna Grande (2018)
A memoir of an undocumented immigrant who finds her voice through education and literature, a real face behind the immigration debate and a testament to resilience and aspiration. American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation by Jon Meacham (2006)
A balanced treatment of religion in American public life. Offers a model for recovering civic virtue and moral seriousness without descending into theocracy or secularism. An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States , by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (2014) Offers a perspective on American history that challenges the dominant narrative and argues for understanding the impact of colonialism and white supremacy on Indigenous populations. The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois (1903)
Explores the spiritual and cultural resilience and enduring fracture of African Americans, combining history, sociology, and prophetic moral vision The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (2010)
Chronicles the Great Migration, revealing how millions of African Americans transformed American cities, economies, and culture with resilience, entrepreneurship, and struggle that contradicts defeatist narratives. Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong (2020)
Explores the invisibility and cultural alienation of Asian Americans, dissecting the myth of the "model minority" and revealing deep contradictions in American racial consciousness. The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer (2013)
Documents how deindustrialization, cultural fragmentation, and elite failure led to the unraveling of American community life and the rise of disillusionment.
III. Cultural Renewal
The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom (1987)
A conservative critique of the intellectual relativism in American universities and its effects on national culture and civic life, arguing for a return to classical and Enlightenment values. Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter (2004)
A critique of how rebellion and counterculture have been absorbed by capitalism, undermining both tradition and authentic cultural renewal. Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity by Samuel P. Huntington (2005)
Analysis of the cultural and demographic challenges to American identity in the 21st century, offering one of the most intellectually serious defenses of national cohesion. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)
Places contemporary Black experience in a historical context, offering a vivid account of systemic injustice and demanding that national greatness be honest about its failings. America Is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan (1946)
A Filipino immigrant’s story of labor, poverty, and hope during the Great Depression. Combines economic critique with immigrant patriotism. A Secular Age by Charles Taylor (2007)
Shapes an understanding of why modern Western societies have experienced religious and moral decline and the "disenchantment" of modern life.
IV. Economic Development and Inequality
The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865–1896 by Richard White (2017)
Explores how American society was industrialized and urbanized at the cost of deep inequality, corruption, and cultural fragmentation. Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu (2020)
A novel about identity, representation, and assimilation. Explores the ways cultural narratives shape economic opportunity and visibility. From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime by Elizabeth Hinton (2016)
Offers an analysis of how federal economic and social policy in the post–Civil Rights era contributed to mass incarceration, revealing the unintended consequences of state power. The Great Depression: A Diary by Benjamin Roth (2010)
A firsthand perspective on the collapse of the economy and the cultural mindset of ordinary Americans, reminding readers of what’s at stake when economies unravel. The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (2010)
Develops an understanding of the intersection of criminal justice, economic disenfranchisement, and race.
V. Economic Revitalization
Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman (1962)
Explores the intrinsic relationship between economic liberty and political freedom—an idea crucial for economic revitalization within a constitutional democracy. Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson (2012)
Argues political and economic institutions determine whether nations succeed or fall into decline, and why institutional strength is more vital than personality-driven leadership. The Great Transformation by Karl Polanyi (1944)
A historical-philosophical critique of unregulated markets and their impact on social cohesion, highlighting reasons for the backlash against globalization and why economic populism arises. Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 by David M. Kennedy (1999)
An account of how America responded to crisis with bold leadership, cultural resilience, and economic transformation, offering precedent for economic renewal under pressure. The Next American Economy: Nation, State, and Markets in an Uncertain World by Samuel Gregg (2022)
Reflections on how the U.S. can balance market dynamism with moral purpose, national identity, and global economic shifts without reverting to protectionist nostalgia.
If Donald Trump genuinely seeks to make America great again not merely in terms of power or wealth, but through spiritual and religious renewal, then he must engage with the moral foundations of American life. This means attending to voices across history and tradition that speak to repentance, justice, covenant, character, humility, and transcendence—not just institutional religion, but religion as a transformative force.
To “make America great again” in a spiritual sense, Trump would need to embrace humility and moral self-examination; champion a public ethic rooted in justice, mercy, love, and truth; understand that religion is not a tool of power, but a prophetic challenge to it; and cultivate a vision of community, character, and conscience—not just dominance. Below, the to-read list continues with a focus on spiritual and religious discernment.
VI. Spiritual and Religious Renewal in America
Prophetic Voices and Moral Imagination
The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann (1978)
Explores the biblical prophets as voices of truth against royal power, injustice, and idolatry, calling for lament, imagination, and transformation at the heart of spiritual renewal. Strength to Love by Martin Luther King Jr. (1963)
How deep Christian faith can inspire social justice and nonviolent change. A model of moral leadership grounded in love, sacrifice, and courage. Moral Man and Immoral Society by Reinhold Niebuhr (1932)
Challenges the illusion that nations or groups can behave as morally as individuals, and calls leaders to realism, humility, and justice rooted in theology and public ethics. Our History Is the Future by Nick Estes (2023)
Connects Indigenous spirituality and activism to the long struggle for land, water, and justice, blending theology and resistance in a prophetic register.
Cultural Diagnosis and Civil Religion
The Sacred Canopy by Peter L. Berger (1967)
How religion provides meaning and coherence to societies and what happens when secularization erodes that canopy producing spiritual fragmentation in America. God Is Red: A Native View of Religion by Vine Deloria Jr. (1973)
Argues that Native religion is land-centered and communally rooted, contrasting with Western abstractions. Urges a return to sacred relationships and ethical responsibility to the Earth. American Covenant: A History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present by Philip Gorski (2017)
How America has long been guided by a covenantal tradition combining prophetic religion and civic republicanism. When one dominates the other, national decay follows. A Nation with the Soul of a Church by Sidney Mead (1975)
How America’s national identity has always been shaped by religious purpose and moral exceptionalism, for better or worse.
Historical Roots of Religious Vitality
Revival and Revivalism by Iain H. Murray (1994)
Traces the difference between genuine spiritual revivals and manipulative revivalist techniques for understanding how faith has shaped national identity. The Democratization of American Christianity by Nathan O. Hatch (1989)
How early American religion, particularly during the Second Great Awakening, became a grassroots force that empowered ordinary people and transformed national culture. The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop by Edmund S. Morgan (1958)
Demonstrates how spiritual discipline and moral purpose shaped early American political culture, raising questions about the cost of spiritual seriousness.
Theological Vision for Renewal
The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1937)
A call to radical Christianity and costly grace in the face of moral compromise. Warns against cheap religion and the dangers of aligning faith too closely with power. Resident Aliens by Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon (1989)
Argues that the church must not conform to the culture but be a counter-cultural community of moral clarity, hospitality, and hope. The Politics of the Cross by Daniel K. Williams (2021)
Seeks a path beyond the culture wars by advocating for a public Christian ethic rooted in biblical justice, sanctity of life, and social compassion, challenging both left and right.
Interfaith and Contemporary Perspectives
Faith in the Public Square by Rowan Williams (2012)
Exploration of how faith traditions can responsibly and critically engage with politics, economics, and ethics in pluralist societies. No Future Without Forgiveness by Desmond Tutu (1999)
A call for spiritual healing and justice through reconciliation, not vengeance. Relevant to America’s racial and cultural divides, and what it means to lead morally. God and the New Atheism by John Haught (2008)
Defends the intellectual credibility of religious faith in the modern world, encouraging leaders to take religious questions seriously, not just politically.
To make America “great” again, Trump must understand not only what made America prosperous in the past, but why it is now so fragmented, so polarized, and the role played by political, cultural, and spiritual institutions in either healing or worsening that fragmentation. What Trump needs, more desperately than he or any of us can imagine, is moral and intellectual clarity about the foundations, contradictions, crises, and rebirths of the American experiment.
He is thought by many to be functionally illiterate, but there is no conclusive evidence for this in the strict, clinical sense. There are numerous anecdotes and behavioral patterns suggesting that he avoids reading and may have difficulties with complex written material, but he has completed higher education and uses written communication tools, which argues against outright illiteracy. The evidence more strongly supports the view that Trump has a pronounced aversion to reading and prefers oral communication; this does not meet the standard definition of functional illiteracy
Whether he is or isn’t, we can probably dispense with any hopes that he would read any of these books or even guides or summaries of them published in magazines, journals, and academic periodicals (I don’t suppose any of them have a Cliff Notes version). Because the Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) is delivered to him but goes unread, perhaps then he might commission some of the literati in the White House Faith Office to read, summarize and orally present their findings to him.
I would not suggest that he read the Bible—not even the one that bears his name!
Now, if you can think of a book that would be useful for Trump to read, write comment with the title and a 25-word description of why you think he should read it.
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