Books like The American Monomyth

This country was settled primarily by Puritan extremists who imprinted their deep distrust of the body’s needs onto future generations. The Calvinist obsession with sin and predestination led to a uniquely American situation. As wealth became a sign of grace, poverty indicated moral failure.

Weber’s classic book describes the process in which a perspective that began in renunciation was transformed into the drive to work incessantly in the pursuit of worldly success and, eventually, conspicuous consumption. As the strictly religious fervor dissipated over time, the competitive quest for efficiency, productivity, wealth, and the self-validation they symbolized remained and became our most fundamental value.

What others would later call the “American Dream” endures because, like no other myth, it promises fulfillment both in this world and the next. This helped me understand our obsession with individualism and why America ignores or mistreats many of its children simply because their parents are… show more.

This Black sociologist demands that we take a deep look into the religious basis of American racism.

Of 5,000 cases of lynching reported between 1880 and 1930, at least 40% functioned as actual human sacrifices, very large communal rituals that identified certain individuals as the source of the community’s problems and eliminated them. The sacrifice created a compact between the people and their deities, expiating their sins and reinforcing their values.

"The victim mediated between the sacred and the profane...the burning cross distilled it all: sacrificed Negro joined by the torch with sacrificed Christ, burnt together and discarded...” Well into the 20th century, “The cross – Christianity’s central symbol of Christ’s sacrificial death – became identified with the crucifixion of the Negro.” Forced to carry all the projections of the white unconscious, the Black man became the American Dionysus.

Patterson observes that in recent generations the stereotype of America’s internal… show more.

This is the scariest book I have ever read. The authors, a communications professor and a psychologist (and veteran), argue that nationalism is the most powerful religion in the United States.

The doctrine that provides the central experience of Christian faith is the sacrifice of an irreplaceable son by an all-powerful father whose will it was that the son should die violently. In the modern world, and especially in America, nationalism has taken on and replicated this mythic function.

What keeps the group together and makes us feel unified is not the sacrifice of the enemy but the sacrifice of the very best of our own. Through successful sacrifice (when enough of our young men are killed), internal hostilities are discharged and the group is re-unified. Sacrifice restores the authority of the nation/god and reconsolidates the group.

This is why we die for the flag, commit our children to do… show more.

This journalist, screenwriter, and novelist is well-versed in psychology, mythology, history, and musicology. His essay in this book, Hear That Long Snake Moan, is the single best piece of non-fiction I have ever read, and it inspired me to write my book.

Our disease – the Western divorce of consciousness from flesh – appears as consumerism, environmental degradation, fundamentalism, perpetual war, genocide, and racism. Yet, mysteriously, it may be possible that the terrible uprooting and enslavement of some fifty million black people over three centuries actually initiated a great healing process.

For all its sorrows, the twentieth century saw periods when Dionysian madness seized the Apollonian mind in its flight from the body and brought it back to Earth. African-American music fundamentally altered America and began the slow process of cleaning out the festering wounds underlying puritanism, nationalism, and materialism. We have a long way to go, but Ventura has… show more.

I am a lifelong Stephen King fan. I was that potbellied kid, perpetually with a stack of books, who insisted that the librarian let me check out Skeleton Crew, even if she told me it would absolutely give me nightmares. One of many, and often. I read the classics like The Stand and It–and watched the TV and film adaptations of Uncle Stevie’s best. Stephen King’s love of pop culture (music, movies, comic books) is evident in most of what he writes, no less so than in his magnum opus: The Dark Tower series.

Want to see where Marvel Comics, Harry Potter, and Stephen King's other fictional characters start to clash and co-mingle? Well, I’m sure you do, because you know. By the time you get to Book V: The Wolves of the Calla–you are already along for the ride and you know how thin that… show more.

I wanted to recommend a couple of funny graphic novels to help stave off dread, and this book by Lisa Hanawalt is simply the funniest graphic novel I have ever read. The author is perhaps best known as one of the co-creators of Bojack Horseman (with her signature animal characters) as well as Tuca & Bertie. It’s a collection of musings and essays, told through Lisa’s incredible artwork. She has such an unexpected left-field sense of humour that is sharp but somehow always warm, underpinned by her beautiful illustrations. This book is like riding on a strange multicoloured rollercoaster though a candy dreamland, but you’re very securely fastened into your seat and feel very snugly held throughout.

Dinosaurs are the gateway drug to kaiju: most Godzilla fans began as kids fascinated by T-rexes and brontosauruses. I was blown away when I discovered W.J.T. Mitchell’s wonky, geeky, and wonderfully eccentric exploration of why we love dinosaurs, actual monsters (albeit prehistoric ones we can only experience today as skeletons in museums) rather than monsters conjured from our darkest imaginations.

Mitchell’s book is lots of fun to dip into, like a jarful of monstrous candy, but reveals in wonderful detail how dinosaurs (just like the creatures of folklore or fiction) are blank slates onto which a culture’s anxieties and aspirations can be inscribed.

You’re probably picking up a theme here - I love an underdog, books that go largely unnoticed. Ron Rosenbaum spent most of his career writing for The Village Voice, Esquire, Vanity Fair, and many others. The Secret Parts of Fortune is a collection of some of his best stuff. Someone described Rosenbaum as “one part intellectual and one part private eye,” and these essays will definitely lead you down a rabbit hole, taking you places you’ve never even considered to venture. My point of entry was A Killing in Camelot, about the unsolved murder of Mary Meyer, an artist and Washington socialite who turned up murdered on a D.C. canal towpath in 1964. As the title suggests, there is a Kennedy connection – isn’t there always.

Culture critic Chuck Klosterman is essentially the next-gen Hunter S. Thompson. This book is a stream of consciousness foray into contemporary pop culture, ranging from essays on sports to music to reality TV. It’s an odd, brilliant, self-indulgent take on the American zeitgeist. Feel smart and have a laugh at the same time.

Although many critical thinking texts include some analysis of bits from popular culture, I wanted to include this book on my list because, as its title indicates, it focuses on popular culture­—which is good because most of us immerse ourselves in popular culture and so it influences our thinking in a huge way. There's a whole chapter. There's a whole chapter dedicated to "Analyzing American Television," another dedicated to "American Advertising and the Subtle Art of Manipulation," and one dedicated to "Popular Culture in Speeches."