Presidential reading habits

Excellent article here on what our Presidents have liked reading. 'Harry Truman loved books more than bourbon. As a self-confessed mama's boy imprisoned behind coke-bottle glasses, Truman inhabited distant times and foreign cultures through volumes like Great Men and Famous Women. His thorough knowledge of the Bible and his deep immersion in the ancients made him naturally sympathetic to the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Not long before he died, asked if he liked to read himself to sleep at night, the ex-president replied, "No, young man. I like to read myself awake."' President Bush likes reading, too. 'A bipartisan fluttering of eyebrows greeted the news that President Bush has been recommending to friends Tom Wolfe's sex-drenched novel of collegiate America, I Am Charlotte Simmons. While moral watchdogs of the right were dismayed by the president's choice of reading matter, critics on the left professed astonishment that Mr. Bush read anything more challenging than TelePrompters and the sports page. Bluenose versus blue state: The latest dust-up over presidential reading habits reflects a cultural divide as old as the republic.'