Sixteen nonfiction books that attempted to define America

Tom Zoellner is the author of several nonfiction books, including Island on Fire: The Revolt that Ended Slavery in the British Empire and the newly released The National Road: Dispatches from a Changing America.

At Electric Lit, he tagged sixteen attempts at the "one nonfiction book that encapsulated the grandeur, folly, ugliness, bravado, idealism, and tempestuousness of the United States of America," including:

The Lost Continent, by Bill Bryson

A young male journalist jumps in a vehicle and makes a giant loop around the country making witty observations along the way. This idea is as least as old as the railroad, and has been seized on by a diverse cast including J. Ross Brown, Mark Twain, Matt Field, Josiah Gregg, Ian Frazer, Richard Grant, and Jonathan Raban. To this groaning table, Bryson brings his characteristic mix of casual erudition mingled with wit, though he mainly finds reasons to be grumpy. Rural folk don’t come off particularly well in this supposed paean to small-town America.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue