Reading: Truth to Power

There's an election stumbling toward resolution here in the USA, and The New York Times has taken it upon itself to ask a group of notable authors to recommend books to be read by the three candidates still in the race. Here's a link to the feature, with a few samples following of the advice offered -- the feature in the New York Times.

• Lorrie Moore recommends MacBeth for Senator Clinton.
• Scott Turow suggests Eisenhower's Mandate for Change. "Ike was the last nonpolitician elected president, and his moderate vision of American government and the restrained use of American power provide potent lessons in how to truly govern from the center."
• John Edgar Wideman offers Machiavelli's The Prince to Barrack Obama.
• Kathryn Harrison recommends that Hillary Clinton read The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker. "An irrefutable explanation of vaunting ambition, the urge to heroism and the cost of our own good opinions of ourselves."
• John Irving points to one of my favorites for John McCain. "And poor old John McCain — who is even older and more old-fashioned than I am — should be forced to read Evan S. Connell’s Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn."