Pres. Obama Releases a Free Playlist of 40 Songs for a Summer Day (Plus 6 Books on His Summer Reading List)

Like much of the rest of the coun­try, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma is get­ting some down­time in August — in his case spend­ing 16 days in Martha’s Vine­yard. From that nice get­away spot, POTUS has launched on Spo­ti­fy (down­load the free soft­ware here) two playlists of music — 20 songs for a hot sum­mer day, and anoth­er 20 for a nice sum­mer evening. You can play the songs below, and fur­ther down the page, find six books on his sum­mer vaca­tion read­ing list.

Day­time lis­ten­ing fea­tures songs from Bob Dylan, Bob Mar­ley, Cold­play, Howl­in’ Wolf, Aretha Franklin, Flo­rence and the Machine, and The Rolling Stones. For night­time, he’s serv­ing up John Coltrane, Van Mor­ri­son, Joni Mitchell, Nina Simone and more. The man has taste. And for sum­mer read­ing you can do worse than offer Jhumpa Lahiri, James Salter and Eliz­a­beth Kol­bert.

“The Pres­i­den­t’s Sum­mer Playlist: Day”

“The Pres­i­den­t’s Sum­mer Playlist: Night”

Oba­ma’s Sum­mer Read­ing 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

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