It's August in Washington. Congress has gone home, and Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton are bolting to Martha's Vineyard for three weeks. For buttoned-up Washington, it's an opportunity to leave the briefing books and strategy memos at the office in favor of lighter fare. National Journal asked some of the capital's movers and shakers to share their summer reading lists. Most of the choices are recent publications, including a goodly number of bestsellers. And most will take the worn-out officials far from the workaday world, as summer reading should.
President Clinton, known for his fondness for historical biographies and mysteries, is in the process of reading Jean Edward Smith's John Marshall: Definer of a Nation, about the fourth Chief Justice, whose 35 years on the Supreme Court began in 1801.
Vice President Al Gore, author of the bestselling Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit, favors nonfiction, particularly works exploring the fields of science and technology. He's more likely to read a book about chaos theory than a whodunit, as evidenced by his summertime choice of Stuart Kauffman's At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self- Organization and Complexity. Perhaps preparing for the international climate-change talks later this year, he's also leafing through The Heat Is On: The High Stakes Battle Over Earth's Threatened Climate, by Ross Gelbspan. On the lighter side, he's picked up A Firing Offense, an international espionage thriller by David Ignatius, an editor at The Washington Post.
White House chief of staff Erskine B. Bowles snuck away in July for a week's respite in Sardinia, Italy, and hopes to continue working through his summer book selections while his boss is away. Bowles, an avid golfer along with the President, plans to read James Dodson's Final Rounds: A Father, A Son, the Golf Journey of a Lifetime. He also wants to read Katharine Graham's autobiography, Personal History, and journalist Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster, which recounts an ascent that resulted in the deaths of eight climbers.
Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman is planning some R&R this month in the Hamptons on Long Island and in Hyannisport, Mass. He'll take along two critically acclaimed bestsellers: Angela's Ashes: A Memoir, by Frank McCourt, which tells of the author's birth in Brooklyn and his grim upbringing in Ireland; and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story, by John Berendt, a nonfiction novel about a 1981 murder in Georgia. Two popular novels -- Snow Falling on Cedars, by David Guterson, and The Partner, by John Grisham -- also make the cut.
In keeping with his Chicago roots, Commerce Secretary William M. Daley hopes this summer to finish The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick 1880-1955, which is Richard Norton Smith's story of the renowned and feared publisher of the Chicago Tribune.
If there's one person in the President's Cabinet who prizes his reading, it has to be Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, who maintains an impressive personal library and has authored three novels, two volumes of poetry and at least five nonfiction works. The former Republican Senator from Maine, who is vacationing through the last week of August, is also reading A Firing Offense. Others on Cohen's list are Silent Witness: A Novel, by Richard North Patterson, and The Iliad, by Homer.
Education Secretary Richard W. Riley just returned from the South Carolina seashore, where he finished Peter Applebome's Dixie Rising: How the South Is Shaping America's Values, Politics and Culture, and where he began The Right to Learn: A Blueprint for Creating Schools That Work, by educator Linda Darling- Hammond. Riley, who has Irish ancestors, was so affected by Angela's Ashes earlier this summer that he's been quoting passages in his speeches, to describe the importance of education.
Environmental Protection Agency administrator Carol Browner has been enjoying A.S. Byatt's Possession: A Romance, a novel about a literary treasure hunt, as well as Mary McGarry Morris's Songs in Ordinary Time, which was one of Oprah Winfrey's book-of-the-month selections. She also just finished Sacred Hunger, by Barry Unsworth, a novel about the mid-18th century British slave trade.
Health and Human Services Secretary Donna E. Shalala is also reading A Firing Offense, as well as The Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller: Worlds to Conquer 1908-1958, by Cary Reich.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew M. Cuomo, who with his wife, Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, is expecting a third child any day now, took the family to Cape Cod at the end of June. His nonfiction book choice this summer is Reengineering Management: The Mandate for New Leadership, by James Champy. But he said the book he's all but memorized is Green Eggs and Ham, by Dr. Seuss, a favorite of the Cuomos' 2-year-old twins, Cara and Mariah.
Because of his jurisdiction over the national parks, Interior Secretary Bruce E. Babbitt usually enjoys some pretty enviable summer vacations. In a Florida mood this summer, he picked up Tourist Season: A Novel, a darkly humorous work by Miami Herald reporter Carl Hiaasen. Babbitt's also reading Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, historian Stephen E. Ambrose's account of the first mapping of the Western frontier.
Although she's had her hands full with the recent labor strike, Labor Secretary Alexis M. Herman this summer will be reading the Hudson Institute report Workforce 2020: Work and Workers in the 21st Century. She's also enjoying New Yorker staff writer Jervis Anderson's Bayard Rustin: Troubles I've Seen: A Biography, which is about a civil rights activist she knew in the 1960s. And Herman, who had her share of stress this year on her lengthy path to confirmation, also has picked up The Road Less Traveled and Beyond: Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety, by M. Scott Peck.
Perhaps boning up before his next round on the links with the President, Office of Management and Budget director Franklin D. Raines -- a leading candidate to succeed Bowles as chief of staff -- is reading The Four Cornerstones of Winning Golf, by Claude Harmon Jr. and John Andrisani. In a more serious vein, Raines said he's also reading The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Nellie Y. McCay.
Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, who knows firsthand what it means to find success in America with immigrant roots, also has been drawn this summer to Angela's Ashes. Another book on her list is Capitol Offense, a mystery by friend Barbara A. Mikulski, the Democratic Senator from Maryland, and Marylouise Oats. Albright's diplomatic skills may be in evidence: Mikulski also happens to be a member of the Senate Appropriations Subommittee on Foreign Operations.
Arkansan Rodney E. Slater, the Secretary of transportation, is reading Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson: The White House Years, by Joseph A. Califano, as well as Real Dream Teams: Seven Practices Used by World-Class Team Leaders to Achieve Extraordinary Results, by Bob Fisher and Bo Thomas. His summer book list includes From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, by historian John Hope Franklin, who's chairing the President's panel on racial reconciliation.
Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin plans to take in an account of the 19th-century struggle between Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia, titled The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia, by Peter Hopkirk. Rubin also is reading Alfred Lansing's Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage, a tale of a journey to Antarctica, first published in 1959 and now enjoying a paperback revival. Rubin, a former board member of the American Ballet Theatre, just finished reading the 1976 book Dance as Life: A Season With American Ballet Theatre, by Franklin Stevens.
Acting Veterans' Affairs Secretary Hershel W. Gober is reading Beaches, Bureaucrats and Big Oil, by Garry Mauro, as well as The Partner.
Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan declined to reveal his summer book list, for fear of appearing irrationally exuberant.
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