RPCV Kent Haruf’s (Turkey 1965-67) novel, Plainsong is one of the five books the President is reading this summer. The book is described on the jacket as a masterful detailing of unsettled lives, bound by their windswept town and landscape — “their fates somehow overcoming the powerful circumstances of place and station, their confusion, curiosity, dignity and humor intact and resonant.”

Slate’s political writer, John Dickerson,  ”analyzed” the list and said that Haruf’s book was the only one that showed “geographical and literary diversity.” The other four books are:

The Way Home, by George Pelecanos
Hot, Flat and Crowded, by Tom Friedman
Lush Life, by Richard Price
John Adams, by David McCullough