Books and movies

About the Midwest

• Badlands by Terrence Malick
• Great Plains by Ian Frazier
• American Dream dir. Barbara Kopple and Cathy Caplan
• God’s Country dir. Louis Malle
• Night of the Gun by David Carr

About business disasters

• Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany Mclean and Peter Elkind
• Barbarians at the Gate

About psychoanalysis

• Century of the Self dir. Adam Curtis
• Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession by Janet Malcolm

About music

• “Eclectic, Reminiscent, Fickle, Amused, Perverse” By George W.S. Trow
• “Ornery” by Bryan Di Salvatore

About war

• War Is A Force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges
• Come and See dir. Elim Kilmov

About the enlightenment

• The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand
• Pandora’s Box dir. Adam Curtis

About language

• A Writer’s Life by Annie Dillard
• “William Strunk” by E.B. White
• “Authority and American Usage” by David Foster Wallace

About work

• The Spirit Catches You, And You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman

About New York

• “The Shitkickers of Madison Avenue” by Lillian Ross