When I lived abroad, I had a short list of books to help people understand the US more. It is a big, complicated country and it can be hard to find well-written works. Here are my top books to understand the US -
1) "American Nations" by @ColinWoodard - Woodard makes the argument that the US is not one nation but actually eleven different national grouping all vying for control. Gives you insights into odd quirks of American identity.
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1/10
2) "The Unwinding" by George Packer - Packer is my favorite US journalist working today. He argues that societies go through periodic periods of unwinding and that US has experienced one since the 1970s. The books follows six people in-depth but also uses the stories of famous individuals who have influenced the unfolding of this period.
He recently published a magisterial article in the Atlantic worth checking out: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/07/phoenix-climate-drought-republican-politics/678494/
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2/10
3) "Nixonland" by Rick Perlstein - this is a heavy book that asks one basic question - how could the US go from the largest democratic landslide in 1964 to the largest republican one in 1972. He argues we essentially live in the house that Nixon built with all of its violence and chaos.
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3/10
4) "A Different Mirror: A Multicultural History of the United States" by Ronald Takaki - I like this one a bit better than Howard Zinn's work or even things like the 1619 project. It has bit less of an ideological axe to grind. What I like is how Takaki excavates unique stories that expand our notion of what the US could be.
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4/10
5) "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent" by Isabel Wilkerson - an absolute gut-punch of a book. It makes the uncomfortable claim that race functions like caste in the United States. She has a way of taking complex and uncomfortable subjects and describing them in well-drawn metaphors.
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5/10
6) "The Irony of American History" by Reinhold Niebuhr - a short book that makes the argument the irony of American history is that America struggles to have an ironic distance with itself. What happens when a superpower actually believes it own rhetoric? Written in the 1950s and still prescient.
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6/10
7) "This Republic of Suffering" by Drew Gilpin Faust - this is one of my favorite works of historical writing. Faust writes a history of the concept of Death through America's collective trauma of its Civil War. It is accessible and shows the totality of change that arose from that conflict. Might be a nice book to pair with "Confederates in the Attic" by Tony Horowitz.
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7/10
8) "The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin - short essays that are are, in my opinion, some of the best takes on race in the US. Baldwin was such a careful thinker and he didn't really rest neatly in any particular ideological camp.
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8/10
And two works of fiction for fun -
9) "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck
10) "Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson
Both are beautiful, haunting books. And I think they capture a certain American spirit. Of course, there are many other such books, but these two fiction works have really stuck with me.
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9/10
This is definitely not an exhaustive list but I wanted to share them here if they might be useful for people. I tried to select works that I think are good for a broad audience and could be read by people outside of the United States. Let me know if you have any thoughts about the list or perhaps contribute with your own suggestions!
I'd recommend starting with 1, 2, and 8, and then read the novels and start to go from there.
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10/10
Sean Bala