Nathaniel Rich’s new novel is Odds Against Tomorrow; he is also the author of The Mayor's Tongue. He lives in New Orleans. Follow @nathanielrich on Twitter.
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Lonelyhearts Be Free Tonight
Nathanael West took real letters and mined them for America’s blackest novel.... MORE
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Dead on the Dance Floor
The bestselling novel in 1923 was by Gertrude Atherton, who was dismissive of the flappers.... MORE
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Insane in the Plains
In the early 1900s people in the prairie states started going insane.... MORE
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Where the Wild Things Are
Is 'The Call of the Wild' a defense of Social Darwinism or a critique of American individualism?... MORE
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The Essential Book of 2012
What is the one book published this year essential to understanding America today?... MORE
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History As Farce
In our ‘American Dreams’ series, Nathaniel Rich reads Jeffrey Eugenides’s ‘Middlesex,’ a novel... MORE
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Poverty Goes Viral
Nathaniel Rich revisits Richard Price’s ‘Clockers,’ a devastating 1992 novel about inner-city... MORE
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The Coast of Utopia
Paul Theroux’s 1982 novel, ‘The Mosquito Coast,’ reveals the promise—and madness—of the American... MORE
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The Stepford Husbands
After 40 years ‘The Stepford Wives’ still holds up as a satire on the dark side of the American... MORE
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“He Has Seen Grief”
It turns out that Gore Vidal was mortal after all.... MORE
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Still Cuckoo After All These Years
Everyone says ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ is about nonconformity, but what about war and PTSD?... MORE
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The Great American Horror Novel
Sixty years after Ralph Ellison’s 'Invisible Man' was published, we still haven’t woken up from his... MORE
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The Vicious Homefront
'A Time To Be Born' doesn’t have a single gun, yet Dawn Powell’s novel captures the madness of... MORE
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The Depression’s Ignoble Savages
Nathaniel Rich examines Erskine Caldwell’s “Tobacco Road,” published in 1932, about a vile,... MORE
