Has he read a biography of Teddy Roosevelt?
I don't think he has read much about his early years, but he has read things like National Geographic's Eyewitness to the 20th Century and here is some of what that book said about him: "Most significantly, it is hard to deny that Theodore Roosevelt was a confirmed racist who used his belief in the inferiority of nonwhites to support American imperial intervention abroad."
That one sentence led to lots of discussion about racism and imperialism. I never read things like that when I was his age and I don't think I would have wanted to talk about it if I had.
He read a biography on Lincoln a while back and he says he is interested in what presidents did while they did while they were in office and why they made the decisions they made.
