Lounge

Into the Wilderness

Shail Desai

A master class in journalism by Jon Krakauer

Searching for Homes

Rini Barman

A meditation on journeys and exile

Historical Lives

Siddharth Singh

TCA Raghavan redeems three masters of the past

The Valley of One

Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar

Stories of reconciliation from Kashmir

In Conversation with TM Krishna

V Shoba

TM Krishna tells V Shoba how his book on Mrdangam makers made him examine his relationship with instrumentalists and other hierarchies

America was the New Jerusalem. It is still the Promised Land. That is not a complete picture but it is how the America we know began. From Henry James’ wilderness with ‘nothing’ in it, the US quickly grew to lead the world, economically, militarily and intellectually. A big country, a lot of things have happened in its brief timeline, and everything has mattered. Below is a list of 10 books, fiction and non-fiction, that span most of the country’s history as the ‘United’ States of America and explain how it was made—and continues to be remade