35 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
French political thinker and historian — author of Democracy in America (1835–40) and The Old Regime and the Revolution — who produced the most penetrating external analysis of American democracy and predicted the soft despotism of modern mass democracy.
American journalist and author — author of Endurance — who interviewed surviving crew members of the Shackleton expedition to write the definitive survival narrative.
Robert Putnam's 2000 documentation of the decline in American civic engagement — using 500,000 interviews to show that Americans participate less in civic organizations, trust their neighbors less, and maintain fewer social connections than in previous generations — the most cited political science book of the 2000s.
American novelist and screenwriter — author of What Makes Sammy Run? — screenwriter of On the Waterfront (Academy Award) — son of Paramount chief B.P. Schulberg — who grew up inside Hollywood and became its most penetrating critic.
American novelist — author of Fight Club, Choke, and Lullaby — the most prominent American transgressive fiction writer since Bret Easton Ellis — who combines dark humor, body horror, and social critique.
Alexis de Tocqueville's two-volume analysis of American democracy (1835, 1840) — the most important outside analysis of American political culture — which identified both the strengths (civic associations, federalism, local government) and dangers (tyranny of the majority, soft despotism) of democratic equality.
Frank Herbert's 1965 science fiction epic — set on the desert planet Arrakis — following Paul Atreides through a story of ecology, religion, politics, and the dangers of the messiah — the best-selling science fiction novel and the foundational ecological SF text.
American novelist — author of The Great Gatsby, Tender Is the Night, and This Side of Paradise — who captured the Jazz Age and the American Dream's corruption with more stylistic precision than any contemporary — whose career ended in alcoholic decline in Hollywood.
Hunter S. Thompson's 1972 Gonzo journalism classic — narrating a drug-fueled road trip to Las Vegas with his attorney — which functions as an autopsy of the 1960s dream and a portrait of American excess.
Chuck Palahniuk's 1996 novel — about a nameless narrator who creates an underground fight club and destructive anti-consumer cult with the charismatic Tyler Durden — the definitive post-consumerist male identity novel.
American science fiction author — author of the Dune series — who created the most complex SF world and the most sophisticated SF treatment of ecology, religion, and messianic leadership.
American novelist — author of To Kill a Mockingbird — Pulitzer Prize 1961 — who published one novel (plus Go Set a Watchman) and created the most widely read American novel about racial injustice.
American novelist and journalist — Nobel Prize in Literature 1954 — author of The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea — who created the most influential prose style in 20th-century American fiction.
American novelist — author of Moby-Dick and Bartleby, the Scrivener — who died in obscurity but whose reputation was fully restored in the 1920s — whose work is now considered the pinnacle of American Romanticism.
Argentine-American novelist — author of In the Distance (2017 Pulitzer finalist) and Trust (2023 Pulitzer Prize winner) — the most literarily ambitious novelist writing about American capitalism and finance.
Maya Angelou's 1969 memoir of childhood in the American South — covering racism, sexual abuse, and self-discovery — the first widely published memoir by an African-American woman and the model for the modern American memoir dealing with race.
Peter Benchley's 1974 thriller — about a great white shark terrorizing a beach town — which became one of the best-selling thrillers of all time and the source material for Spielberg's Jaws (1975), the first modern blockbuster.
American novelist — Nobel Prize in Literature 1962 — author of The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, and East of Eden — who created the most influential fiction about American labor and the Depression.
American novelist and essayist — author of Bad Behavior, Two Girls Fat and Thin, and Veronica — who writes fiction about sexuality, power, and moral complexity with unflinching precision — among the most critically respected American literary fiction writers.
American poet and memoirist — author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings — Civil Rights activist — Presidential Medal of Freedom — who created the modern African-American memoir and is the most quoted American poet.
Herman Melville's 1851 novel — narrated by Ishmael — following Captain Ahab's obsessive pursuit of the white whale Moby Dick — combining encyclopaedic whaling detail with philosophical meditation and tragedy — the supreme American novel.
Vivek Ramaswamy's 2022 argument — that American culture has become defined by victimhood identity across both political parties, and that reclaiming civic identity requires moving beyond victim narratives.
Ernest Hemingway's 1952 novella — about old Cuban fisherman Santiago's epic three-day struggle with a great marlin in the Gulf Stream — which won him the Pulitzer Prize (1953) and contributed to his Nobel Prize (1954).
American biographer — author of The Power Broker and the multi-volume The Years of Lyndon Johnson — two Pulitzer Prize winners — the greatest living American biographer — whose work examines how power is accumulated and used in American democracy.
American biographer — author of Titan, Alexander Hamilton, Washington, and Grant — Pulitzer Prize winner (2011 — Washington: A Life) — the most commercially successful serious American biographer.
B.H. Liddell Hart's 1929 biography of General William T. Sherman — arguing that Sherman's indirect strategy (March to the Sea) was more decisive than Grant's direct approach — the most influential military biography of the 20th century.
John Steinbeck's 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — following the Joad family's migration from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to California — the most politically effective American novel and the definitive literary account of the Great Depression.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel — narrated by Nick Carraway — tracing Jay Gatsby's pursuit of Daisy Buchanan and the American Dream's corruption by old money — the most taught American novel and the canonical text on the American Dream.
David Brooks's 2011 synthesis of social science research — told through the fictional lives of Harold and Erica — arguing that unconscious processes, relationships, and social context are more important than individual rationality in determining human success.
William James's 1902 Gifford Lectures — examining religious experience empirically through case studies of mystical experiences, conversions, prayer, and saintliness — arguing that religious experience is a genuine category of human experience deserving scientific study regardless of theological truth claims.
Ron Chernow's 1998 biography of John D. Rockefeller — the definitive account of the first American billionaire — combining intimate biographical access with business and social history.
Harper Lee's 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — narrated by Scout Finch — following her father Atticus's defense of a Black man falsely accused of rape in 1930s Alabama — the most widely read American novel about racial injustice.
Hernan Diaz's 2022 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — told in four parts, each rewriting the story of a Gilded Age financial titan and his wife from a different perspective — examining how wealth controls narrative and how women's stories are erased from official history.
Budd Schulberg's 1941 novel — about Sammy Glick's ruthless rise in Hollywood — the definitive portrait of naked American ambition — still the canonical fictional account of sociopathic success.
American philosopher and psychologist — author of Principles of Psychology, The Varieties of Religious Experience, and Pragmatism — brother of Henry James — who created pragmatism and the first American psychology laboratory.