The novelist and essayist Gore Vidal once remarked that, “my subject is America,” and I, too, have devoted my life to understanding the United States. And like Vidal, I often research and write about American history in the form of immanent critique, which underscores the difference between the nation’s ideals of liberty and equality and its actual manifestations of power. The following book reviews cover the complex nature of American history, from Lawrence Wright’s day-by-day account of the Camp David Accords to Timothy Egan’s narrative history of the rise and fall of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana during the 1920s. Acknowledging America’s successes—and its profound failures—is an indispensable practice for possessing a real picture of the United States. I hope that the following reviews are but a small contribution to such a picture.
Read MoreA view of the Washington Monument from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C., July 5, 2025. Photo by the author.
