If the agenda is to figure out who Democrats need to listen to about America then the answer is a lot of different people, and they need to listen to them in different ways. For example, I agree that Ehrenreich is pretty polemical, and that a lot of her recent work might not add that much to the discussion (most Democrats already know about injustice in America, one of the problems is to find a way to talk about it that doesn’t threaten or exclude or dash the hopes of the “middle class”). But _Fear of Falling_ and the discussions of the cultural meaning of success that grow out of it are key analytical perspectives on who Americans are and how they think. Which is why I think some Democrats should be reading and understanding Ortner too, and where I think Jackson Lears comes in: not so much for the work on advertising per se, but for the early work on the anxieties around identity in a world where one must win freinds and influence people, and for his recent work on luck: how does our imagination of the American public change if we take seriously the fact that it likes slot machines? Other useful analyses include those of Julie Lindquist (_A Place to Stand: Politics and Persuasion in a Working-Class Bar_) and the work of John Hartigan on whiteness. Joel Garreau is another interesting thinker–I haven’t read the most recent book, but _Edge Cities_ is good because it recognizes that sprawl happens because there are reasons people like it. Another book that I suspect would be good to throw into the mix (if challenging to apply politically in a direct way would be _Home Rules_ by Denis Wood & Robert Beck: rules for living in the Wood house, elicited from the Wood children: (150. “Don’t take the shade off and use it as a space helmet” 151. “The lamp can be moved but you have to put it back where it goes”.)

The challenge, obviously, is turning all this into a politics, but I think some of the understandings referenced above are places we need to start.

Jennifer Price author of Flight Maps. Nobody does the human-nature intersection better. Her essays inlcude things like “Looking for nature at the mall” and “A Natural History of the Plastic Pink Flamingo” She is the American contradiction. She is an environmental writer who loves L.A., (and what real American doesn’t)?

Craig Werner: The man for politcal – cultural intersections. His blog at Holler if ya hear me is fantastic. His books are amazing.

Pete Daniels: He might single-handedly bring the South back to the democrats. He gets NASCAR. ’nuff siad.

Better known people who haven’t been mentioned yet:

Jish Gen.
Richard White (although he knows he is the smartest guy in the room, so that’s a problem)

Bloggers:
Laura at 11D
Russel Arben Fox

Votes for
Didion
Rodriguez
Gary Wills
Anna Quindlin
Joss Wheedon

Votes against
Mike Davis (polemical and clearly out of touch with US people)
T.J. Jackson Lears (He’s okay but certainly not the best historian in the US right now, not even on my top 10 list and not exactly accessible).

I love City of Quartz but I’ve found Davis’ later books to be increasingly strained in many respects.

I think King is a very good writer in many respects, and I definitely think that when he’s in his groove, he has some insights into the American zeitgeist that are pretty distinctive.

David Brooks – his editorial writing is frequently dishonest, but his books, I think, are very good

Tom Wolfe – “A Man in Full” is a hugely underrated novel.

Godfrey Hodgson – a British journalist who has written several brilliant and canonical (for grad students) works about American since 1945