In this New York Times article, "From Books, New President Found Voice," Michiko Kakutani explores President Barack Obama's favored reading matter, "a reading list that shaped a president." Workshop faculty member Marilynne Robinson’s award-winning novel 'Gilead' is included on this honored bookshelf of texts that influenced Obama's world view and his quest for understanding the human condition.

"What’s more, Mr. Obama's love of fiction and poetry — Shakespeare's plays, Herman Melville's 'Moby-Dick' and Marilynne Robinson's 'Gilead'...along with the Bible, Lincoln’s collected writings and Emerson's 'Self Reliance' — has not only given him a heightened awareness of language. It has also imbued him with a tragic sense of history and a sense of the ambiguities of the human condition..." Read more