I study American history, so theoretically this post could go on forever. Rather than write about some of my favorite books about American history, however, the books I’ve written about here are ones I read with the specific goal of expanding my horizons. Some are journalistic and have helped me understand what’s happening in different parts of the country during our current moment. Others offer a more genre-bending way of looking at the American past.

There is no one story of America, nor is there a singular experience of American life. The books in this post offer a window into greed, corruption, violence, and suffering, and they also highlight moments of hope, beauty, joy, and community. American stories are messy, and I’m uninterested in the ones that try to make you feel “good” about the country. Writing about America should be critical and complex; it should make you think about how the country can be a better, safer place for all. I think these books fit that bill.

The Open Space of Democracy by Terry Tempest Williams

I found The Open Space of Democracy in a used bookstore in Cambridge recently and did a double take. Terry Tempest Williams is one of America’s foremost nature writers and conservationists, and she has deep roots in the state of Utah where I have family roots. The Open Space of Democracy was published in 2004, but it feels deeply relevant to our present moment. Williams considers what it means to be American, and what it means to participate in democracy when it feels like democracy and reason are crumbling around you. In the wake of Al Gore’s loss of the presidency to George Bush, Williams feels a pressing need to defend the climate and American wilderness. In 2019, that need is all the more desperate, and the threat to democracy all the more urgent.

I’m going to include this quotation which I feel sums up the relationship between climate and politics brilliantly: “We have made the mistake of confusing democracy with capitalism and have mistaken political engagement with a political machinery we all understand to be corrupt. It is time to resist the simplistic, utilitarian view that what is good for business is good for humanity in all its complex web of relationships. A spiritual democracy inspired by our own sense of what we can accomplish together, honoring an integrated society where the social, intellectual, physical, and economic well-being of all is considered, not just the wealth and health of the corporate few.”

South and West by Joan Didion

South and West is mostly based on Joan Didion’s notes from traveling in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana in the 1970s. In a much shorter section at the end of the book, Didion also reflects on her home state of California. I personally preferred the chapters on California, which made me seek out other writing of that genre - see my review of Eve Babitz below.

I haven’t read any of Didion’s other work, and this book may have been an odd place to start. South and West is based on Didion’s travel/writing notes, and while it’s compelling to see glimpses of any writer’s process, it’s particularly interesting when you know an author’s work enough to compare the process to a finished product. Reading Frantumaglia, for example, only really makes complete sense once you’ve read Elena Ferrante’s novels. I was intrigued enough by South and West to consider reading Didion’s other writing, and I think this would be one to revisit after having done that.

Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A. by Eve Babitz

This book!! I could not stop underlining while reading Slow Days, Fast Company. Matthew Specktor’s introduction to the NYRB edition of the book is brilliant as well, and he does a better job of summarizing Babitz and her ethereal, “cool-girl of the ‘70s” aura. Babitz always seems to be introduced by her hedonism or her paramours, but Specktor argues that in doing so, “Babitz ceases to be the heroine of her own literary biography, she becomes just another flytrap, a not quite cautionary tale, a party girl spattered with genius instead of (this distinction seems important) an actual genius who just happened to y’know, like to party.” Actual genius she is.

Slow Days, Fast Company begins with the line, “This is a love story and I apologize; it was inadvertent,” and that may just be one of the best opening lines I’ve ever read. The whole book actually is fully of quippy one-liners I couldn’t help but underline. On L.A. artistic communities: “it’s impossible to tell if one’s been inspired, or if it was the cocaine, or what.” On boring boyfriends: “I’d broken off with both of those guys because I was impatient with ordinary sunsets; I was sure that somewhere a grandiose carnival was going on in the sky and I was missing it.” On rain in L.A.: “It’s freedom from smog and unbroken dreary hateful sameness, it’s freedom to look out the window and think of London and little violets and Paris and cobblestones. It’s freedom to be cozy. Cozy! You can be cozy and not even have to go to San Francisco.” Babitz’s writing career is one long ode to L.A., and this book makes you feel you’re right there with her.

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

Stop what you’re doing and read this book. When Just Mercy first came out in 2014, everyone was abuzz. I remember the hype surrounding the book, but somehow I managed not to listen to the positive reviews and friends who recommended it until now. Occasionally I find that books with immense hype don’t live up to my expectations (I didn’t like Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant or Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You…), but Just Mercy blew me away.

Bryan Stevenson is a lawyer and the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, which works to defend children accused or convicted of crimes, the wrongfully condemned, and those on death row. Through personal stories and the cases of people he has defended, Stevenson demonstrates the insidious nature of American punishment, as well as the turmoil and pain it delivers to all but society’s very rich or very lucky. The book argues forcefully (and, in my opinion, correctly) for the necessity of mercy over punishment. There is no way to come away from Just Mercy thinking America’s approach to criminal “justice” is in any way just.

American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts by Chris McGreal

In American Overdose, Chris McGreal traces the roots of modern America’s opioid crisis. In unsparing prose and rigorous journalism, McGreal illuminates the greed and corruption that drove Big Pharma to generate epidemic drug addiction in some of the poorest parts of the United States. Twenty years later, now that addiction has taken hold of communities throughout the country, politicians are starting to finally pay attention.

McGreal follows a range of actors at different levels of the crisis - from corrupt doctors who quietly become millionaires selling pills, to small-town mayors who raised the alarm of impending crisis back in 2002 but were shut down and ignored by higher-ups. McGreal follows users and their families, those who survive and the many who have not. He demonstrates what happens when politics gives way to capitalism, when governments put corporate interests ahead of the health and safety of the people, and, ultimately, the picture is bleak.