Five of the best books that explain America

Philipp Meyer is the author of the novels American Rust and The Son.

One of Meyer's five favorite books about America, as told to the Telegraph:

Six generations ago, America still had an open frontier and aboriginal people who had not yet surrendered their land. A good deal of our mythology of self-invention comes from the fact that all this land – an entire “empty” continent – was seemingly there for the settling. Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (1985) shows just how “empty” the land really was (not very) and just what the “settling” really looked like.

Read about another novel Meyer tagged.

Blood Meridian is one authority's pick for the Great Texas novel and is among Peter Murphy's top ten literary preachers, David Vann's six favorite books, Robert Olmstead's six favorite books, Michael Crummey's top ten literary feuds, Philip Connors's top ten wilderness books, six books that made a difference to Kazuo Ishiguro, Clive Sinclair's top 10 westerns, Maile Meloy's six best books, and David Foster Wallace's five direly underappreciated post-1960 U.S. novels. It appears on the New York Times list of the best American fiction of the last 25 years and among the top ten works of literature according to Stephen King.

Visit Philipp Meyer's website.

The Page 69 Test: American Rust.

--Marshal Zeringue