Today on Uncommon Knowledge, I ask Amb. Charles Hill, author of Grand Strategies and professor at Yale where he teaches a seminar called “Studies in Grand Strategy,” to recommend a couple of books for President Obama’s summer reading list.

The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides and Virgil’s Aeneid. It seems to me that President Obama is kind of like Aeneas – Aeneas kind of wanders around and things happen to him. He doesn’t make things happen; he pulls away. We saw this in the prisoner swap with Russia. I was watching Rahm Emanuel on television trying to convince the interviewer that the president had nothing to do with the swap – that this was decided by other entities of the government and that the president was simply kept briefed. That’s an Aeneid kind of thing. Aeneas never quite knows what his real mission is. He thinks he knows, but he doesn’t know. Aeneas has to go to Hell to find out what his mission is. Let’s hope President Obama doesn’t have to go to Hell before he figures it out.

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