Russia is sometimes known as the warrior nation. Despite being under the Western blockade, the Russian economy has not collapsed and it has even been slightly improved, which is not short of a miracle. The performance of a country is closely related to the cultural literacy of a country's leaders. A Google search of "what books does Putin read" will show over 32,800,000 results, most related to Putin's reading preference. This is not an accidental phenomenon. If we Google search the books read by the U.S. President Donald Trump, the answer would be somewhat ambiguous. One can see the President's recommendation list, or books recommended by others to the President. It is said that Trump has written 16 books, which of course, many were ghost written, including erotic and murder fictions. If these suspicious factors are filtered out, Google's search results for Trump's readings are practically zero.
As the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin also recommended a reading list of 100 books. The incident stems from the fact that on January 25 last year, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who was running for the next president, publicly stated during his inspection in the far eastern region of Russia that he was planning to edit a list of 100 Russian classics, and even personally wrote a 4500-word article in the Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta and stated that, "in the 1920s, some of the top universities in the United States advocated reading Western cultural classics, which are the most important and influential books that are considered to be the cornerstones of the Western culture", "Russia has always been a reading nation; in the country, every middle school students should read more classics to inherit Russian culture". Therefore, he suggested compiling 100 recommended books for middle school students.
Putin is the kind of person who reads thick, classic hardbacks, which shows that he has the ability to think deeply. He has the ability to digest and absorb classic ideas and transform them into his own cultural literacy. However, Putin never reads his own biography or books about himself. German journalist Hubert Seipel once presented a new book he wrote to Putin, which is about the motivation and attitude of Putin in making decisions. Putin took a glance at the book and said that he had never read a book about himself. "I know everything about my own affairs". Seipel is in fact, a fan of Putin. He worked for Der Spiegel and later involved himself in film making. In 2012, he produced the documentary Ich, Putin -Ein Porträt and in 2014, he interviewed Putin on the Ukrainian issue.
In his book Leadership, American political scientist James MacGregor Burns sees the relationship between reading and the political figures of the world. First, reading the classics by political thinkers like Plato, Cicero, John Locke carries huge impact; second, politicians who love to read often show qualities that distinguish themselves from others.
A number of the Presidents of the United States were also known to be avid readers and thinkers. Legend has it that before the presidential campaign, George W. Bush repeatedly studied and reflected on The Dream & the Nightmare: The Sixties' Legacy to the Underclass; his renowned "compassionate conservatism" policy in fact came from this book. Theodore Rex, the British-American writer Edmund Morris's biography of President Theodore Roosevelt is also a favorite of Bush. Roosevelt was the president of the United States in 1901, and exactly a century later Bush was elected as the President in 2001. These two Presidents of the new century faced arduous tasks and challenges. The Theodore Rex era is the beginning of the United States moving towards the "American Empire", and one can only imagine Bush's political ambitions with this book being included in his favorite reading list.
In 1996, Bill Clinton was asked by a magazine to list the 12 books he was reading; the list includes the biographies of three former presidents Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Andrew Jackson. He once boasted that when he was at Oxford, he read 300 books a year; this would mean he read a book almost every day. Clinton was educated in Europe, and one of the European traditions is the passion for reading. It is said that Jean-Paul Sartre read 300 books a year.
Putin likes to read two types of books, one is the Russian and international classics, like the works of Chekhov, Tolstoy, Gogol and others. The other type is more pragmatic, such as the biographies of Peter the Great, Catherine the Great and Pyotr Stolypin the hardline Prime Minister of the Russian Empire. He believes that he has to learn more about things that can contribute to his work, and many great figures in Russian history can offer practical lessons.
However, world leaders do not necessarily read only serious books. The ex-French President Jacques Chirac loves to read about Chinese bronzes. At a NATO summit, Chirac went for a detour to check the magazines about bronzes. He is also a huge lover of Chinese literature, and said that he admires the ancient Chinese poets Du Fu and Li Bai, particularly the latter. Chirac even said that his biggest wish is to complete a film script about Li Bai.
Gordon Brown is recognized as the British Prime Minister who loves to read after Churchill. The top two books in the reading lists listed by him are Assault on Reason by the former U.S. Vice President Al Gore on how the U.S. government makes decisions and the Age of Turbulence by the former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. The Secretary-General of the United Nations can also be considered as a world leader. Ban Ki-moon loves to read the English version of Time magazine. It is said that he is "not picky" in his reading, and he would read the same materials again and again. In his youth, he read eagerly every issue of the Time magazine in order to learn English and to understand the international situations. This reading habit naturally affected his later political career.
Of course, the world's most culturally literate leader is the late Czech Republic President Václav Havel. He is a writer and a playwright and his works had won numerous awards, making him incomparable with other politicians. Reading is to improve cultural literacy; this is true to common people, and is of no exception to political leaders. For them, the only exception is the ability to think deeply. Any politician with this ability of deep thinking will have extraordinary performance.
Final Analysis Conclusion:
Although the current world turbulence is mainly concentrated in the financial field, the logic behind it does not restrict to the financial market. Using logic for analysis requires deep thinking. Only deep thinking can reveal the essence of things in in information fragments.
