On Literature & the Presidency

An interesting essay in the Times Sunday Book Review about the favorite books of the current candidates and previous presidents. I found this passage particularly interesting, having read this not too long ago:

Most interesting, though, was McCain’s reaction when I suggested that his father, a career naval officer who rose to be commander in chief of the Pacific forces during the Vietnam War, was rather like Victor (Pug) Henry, the hero of Herman Wouk’s “Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance.” Exactly, McCain said: his father was exactly like Pug Henry. Later, I reread the last pages of “The Winds of War.” In them, Henry watches his son set sail from Pearl Harbor aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise: “He could almost picture God the Father looking down with sad wonder at this mischief. In a world so rich and lovely, could his children find nothing better to do than to dig iron from the ground and work it into vast grotesque engines for blowing each other up? Yet this madness was the way of the world.”

Interesting and amusing as well that both politicians admire Robert Penn Warren's brilliant All The King's Men.