Time to trot out book titles as political shorthand for the educated set. What do candidate book lists say about the people running for office? Mostly they say, “I listened to my PR Director and left the Dan Brown books off the list.”

Both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton’s proclaimed reading habits show intriguing overlap, including both the classic American novel Invisible Man and Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. (Translation: “I am with you black America; I have some liberal tendencies; I fear the wrath of both God and the electorate in the midwest.”) And so on.

George W said he reads a lot about Churchill. (Translation: “I’m useful in battle.) But he also said in 2006 that he was taking Camus’ Outsider on holiday – we never found out whether it was the promise of gratuitous killing of Arabs that appealed, or whether he wanted us to know he was not the know-nothing hick he was painted as.