When the going gets tough, the tough get reading.
Here are a few books I've read recently that help make sense of the recent election.
Deep South, by Paul Theroux. A somewhat cantankerous but honest assessment of poverty in rural America. It helped me appreciate a part of America that is everywhere but poorly understood.
Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. The moderate-conservative answer to What's Wrong with Kansas. A look at the suffering in the rust belt with sympathy that is not, for a change, also uppity. For a taste of this content, Vance wrote a post-election essay for the New York Times that offers a taste of his worldview.
Dispatches from Pluto,by Richard Grant. A look at the poorest of the poor in America, the Mississippi Delta, from the viewpoint of an Englishman-cum-New Yorker. And with a kind eye and even a sense of joy, I might add.
The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt. An examination of the differences between right and left wing psychology. I found the most eye-opening aspect of Haidt's research his discovery that one of the traits conservatives have in common that liberals do not is the importance of the sacred. In Haidt's view, conservatives are horrified by the abandonment of respect for sacred things (like flags and prayer) in liberal life.
Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. Although this book is not about politics, it may be the most important book about human thinking written in the 21st century. A summary of Kahneman's Nobel Prize winning research, it looks at how humans make decisions, and how our tendency is to make decisions based on emotions and then back them up with facts, instead of the other way around. In Kahneman's thinking, the gut feeling almost always wins.
The Unwinding, by George Packer. A look at how the American system, in the wake of the 2007 financial crisis, has failed middle class Americans. Packer's view is that the disappearance of traditional institutions that supported the American Dream has resulted in concentration of wealth and the erosion of much of American cultural life.The Unwinding won the 2013 National Book Award for Non-fiction.