President Barack Obama said he bought “books for every age group, from five to 52″ — including one on how race affects athleticism — in a trip Saturday afternoon to Politics & Prose, an independent bookstore in Washington, D.C.
The semi-controversial book “The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance,” by David Epstein may have been Obama’s most interesting purchase – Epstein himself has acknowledged that the book tackles taboo topics such as race and the unsettled nature-nurture debate.
“I lost so much sleep over this,” Epstein told The Atlantic in an interview earlier this year. “I literally almost backed out of writing this book, because the issues of race and gender got me so nervous. Eventually my agent and one of my colleagues convinced me to just do it, in the best way I could.”
Beside many other topics, Epstein explains in his book why track and field sprinters of West African descent tend to excel in the sport compared to other racial cohorts. Inborn differences in hemoglobin levels and limb length are part of the explanation for their dominance in the sport, he says. That topic is still taboo in most academic circles, says Epstein, for fears that it may lead to discussions on innate intelligence differences.
Another sports book Obama purchased was ”Collision Low Crossers: A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football” — a book by Nicholas Dawidoff documenting the year he spent tagging along with the New York Jets football team.
The president’s selection of over 20 books was diverse, with some titles, like “Lulu and the Brontosaurus” and “Ottoline and the Yellow Cat” seemingly chosen by first daughters Sasha and Malia, who accompanied the president.
The first family
also bought a copy of ““Harold and the Purple Crayon,” a 1955 classic about a young boy who wanted something so he built it — or, in his case, drew it with a purple crayon. (TOP TEN: Memes mocking Obama’s ‘you didn’t build that’ remark)
also bought a copy of ““Harold and the Purple Crayon,” a 1955 classic about a young boy who wanted something so he built it — or, in his case, drew it with a purple crayon. (TOP TEN: Memes mocking Obama’s ‘you didn’t build that’ remark)
The more adult selections ran the gamut from literary fiction to historical fiction to sports-related non-fiction.
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