Hey Clifford, I'm loving this so far, especially how you've enlisted other stackers to comment in the piece where their expertise allows. It occurs to me that it would be pretty cool (if you're open to it) to keep this as a living document, where people could submit notes like the ones already included to be added as you see fit for works that have less content below the heading.
If you think a work was unfairly snubbed, let me know which one, why, and which you think it should replace.
There's no diversity quota for "influential," but I'm ready to edit this list if a sound argument is made. I wouldn't mind a little more diversity here either.
The GGM and OB suggestions are good. I had thought hard about both and will reconsider them in future iterations. The AD one isn't Fantasy, I don't think (maybe minor fantastical elements somewhere that I've never heard of?). Thank you for your suggestions.
I think they still fit into the provision made in Caveat A. Again, I appreciate your suggestions. Definitely given me a couple of works to think about and reconsider. :)
It may be better if this list was titled "100 most influential titles for Western Fantasy" or something. Western Fantasy surely has some influence from other cultures (Arabian Nights, for example) but its influences will focus on Western authors.
Identifying the list this way would help address this criticism and also keep it focused -- "100 Years of Solitude" is Magical Realism, which is a distinctly Latin American fantasy genre with its own influences and canon.
Western Fantasy would also need to be mindful of influential writers from the African diaspora of the mid to late 20th century i would think. I really need to make my own list at some point.
I love your dedication to categorizing eras and works of fantasy literature and highlighting the importance of each work and what gives each its staying power over its peers. What an inspiration to those of us who strive to be literary fantasy movers.
I would offer the following on the significance of The Wind in the Willows:
Kenneth Graham's book of loosely-connected anthropomorphic stories paved the way for a slew of fantasy books/series with animals as main characters--Brian Jacques' Redwall, Erin Hunter's Warriors series, Robert O. Brien's Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, Richard Adams' Watership Down--as well as works that not only give animals human traits, but parallel lives alongside humans, such as T.H. White's The Sword in the Stone. Also, in Toad we find the (child-friendly) archetype of the lovable, morally-gray rapscallion. The vibes-over-plot-ness of TWitW makes this a progenitor of the cozy fantasy subgenre.
I love this!! Saved for future reference to expand my reading list. It’s fun to see how genres and literary movements develop over time. And I love the addition of the Percy Jackson series on here, I read it as a really young kid and loved it so much I started reading it again the moment I finished it. I very much agree with Lewis and MacDonald that children’s books are real literature!
Most influential is a relatively subjective and rather difficult factor to nail down. And covering such a long time period just adds to how massive an undertaking this essay must have been. It’s clear you put a lot of time and effort into this, great work!
1. Conan The Barbarian - At their best, Robert E. Howard's stories show a prose style perfecting the language of adventure to give the plots the grandeur of legend infused with the grit of American pulp while portraying an outsider hero that readers could identify his alienation from civilization, and yet admire how his will and cunning allows him to carve his path in life.
When revived and reprinted as a paperback series in the 1960s, it set the tone for commercial fantasy for over 20 years before the rise of Sword of Shannara, The Belgariad, and other post-Tolkien series took over in publishing.
2. INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE was a game-changing novel in itself. The superhuman figures of the Anne Rice's sequels from THE VAMPIRE LESTAT onwards further developed the wish-fulfillment fantasy aspects hinted at in this novel, but INTERVIEW has more than that. It has absolute horror between its pages as we are introduced to the cabals of vampires who prey on 19th-century Europe and how they watch and assess who to kill and feast on in the grand theatres, with real sensuality in all the Southern Gothic meets Euro-horror atmosphere.
It violates taboos like the willful vampirization of children, and all told through the POV of someone grown distant to the sufferings of mortals. It made the queer subtext become the text for the readers of 1970s America. Vampire fiction and vampire movies can now be divided by one bloody line, pre-INTERVIEW and post-INTERVIEW.
3. Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn - At first glance, it seems another trilogy of door-stopper epic fantasy novels published trying to be another Tolkien, but Tad Williams incorporates other fantasy authors such as Mervyn Peake and Michael Moorcock influences in ways that subvert reader expectations.
Noble kings get corrupted, legends of heroic feats are exposed as lies, mighty warriors are near crippled with guilt over their deeds, court intrigue complicates the struggle, and the heroine does not save her virginity for the hero.
George R. R. Martin would take these ideas and lean more into them to more actively deconstruct epic fantasy. Still, Memory, Sorrow and Thorn are the first to call into question tropes and formulae that were ossifying the genre in hopes of rejuvenating it.
This is a great project, and once it's finished this is going to be a super useful resource for fantasy readers to understand the history and evolution of the genre. For your final question, I'd say my favorite titles are Robin Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings, Le Guin's Earthsea, and Pratchett's Discworld. I want to read more stand-alone fantasy, so I'm adding a few of the books here to my TBR
I'll put some words in for the Dragonlance novels, particularly the first "Chronicles" trilogy.
------------------------
These novels set the standard for Dungeons & Dragons based "realm" franchises, where a certain universe and key heroic characters are known throughout a continuity but various stories could branch out from there. Krynn has a map and a shared history. The mainline Heroes of the Lance and their progeny are handled by the core writers Weis & Hickman, whereas other fantasy writers can build off of the 'module' to create their own epics, such as the Dwarven Nations Trilogy by Dan Parkinson which contains no reference to the Heroes of the Lance at all but tells a multigenerational history of dwarven kingdom consolidation using the rules of the realm developed by Weis & Hickman.
It's connection with Dungeons & Dragons cannot be understated. The authors started it out both as a module for the tabletop roleplaying game and built the stories and the world around D&D's key mechanics. The "Chronicles" trilogy contains a key adventuring party built out of a fairly standard Dungeons & Dragons group. Raistlin the Mage and Goldmoon the Cleric stand beside Tasslehoff the kinder (halfling) rogue and Flint the dwarven fighter and Fizban the paladin, and so forth.
Dragonlance not only modeled around Dungeons & Dragons but modeled how to play Dungeons & Dragons for many later players. Other realm franchises were more explicitly developed by Wizards of the Coast for Dungeons & Dragons player modules with backstory, particularly the Forgotten Realms books.
With regard to the Wizard of Oz, isn't it one of the earliest examples of a fantasy novel that developed into a series involving a shared universe? (14 books in all) I think so. I see references to George A. McDonald in that regard, but in that case, we're talking about two related books. Obviously, a lot of later fantasy writers followed that trend.
The Wizard of Oz also may be the first fantasy book to become a movie after the introduction of sound. (Silent films did adapt the Nibelung--since we're mentioning epic poems--1001 Arabian Nights, and the Sorrows of Satan, among others). WoO may also be the first fantasy novel to become a Broadway musical, long before indirectly inspiring another Broadway musical. so in terms of bringing fantasy to other mediums, it could be considered a pioneer.
Anyway, I love what you're doing with this, but perhaps it might be better to allow the list to rise to 200 instead of swapping titles out if someone suggests an addition. (You have more self-discipline that I have to have gotten it down to 100 in the first place, but if you want to make it more representative of other cultures, that 100 line is going to be hard to hold without losing some really valuable titles.)
If we're using epic poetry as inspirations for fantasy, it would seem the two great Indian epics, the Mahabarata and the Bhagadad Gita, should be included, though I don't know enough about the Indian literary scene to know how influential they have been on fantasy literature, and of course, using texts from living religions opens up a whole new can of worms. You'd really then need to list the Bible, not as fantasy literature itself, but as an undoubted influence. How many fantasy novels involve angels, demons, saints, and other aspects of the Judeo-Christian tradition, not to mention Christian allegories like the Narnia books (and, of course, Milton's Paradise Lost).
Speaking of which, pacts with the devil are a fairly common theme, so how about Marlowe's Faustus, not the earliest, but certainly the most influence literary work on the subject up to that point and an undoubted influence on Goethe's Faust? A lesser influence on that theme but a much better known play, Macbeth features witches, prophecies, etc., and Macbeth doesn't exactly make a deal with the witches but is tricked by them, much as people are always tricked by the devil.
In terms of structural influences, Ovid's Metamorphoses is the first example of a frame story (in fantasy or otherwise). Its successors include Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (with several fantasy elements of its own) and the previously mentioned 1001 Nights.
it also seems as if at least one of the Norse works that so influenced Tolkien should be on the list.
I have to stop now. But you can see why I could never pull together the discipline do a list capped at 100. I've thought of 20 more possibilities beyond the ones I've mentioned just while I'm sitting here. So kudos for having the willpower to stick to your own limits.
Without The Dying Earth, Dungeons and Dragons would look a lot different (The "Vancian Magic" system comes right from Dying Earth.) Without Jack Vance, I doubt there would be Book of the New Sun, as he was such an influence on Gene Wolfe. I love Jack Vance so much. I think he's hugely underrated, but admittedly he is a bit of a "writer's writer." Not everyone gets his style. My favourite fantasy series is his Lyonesse trilogy, written much later in his career vs The Dying Earth, and I highly recommend it. It's very Fairy Tale—and very Vancian.
An excellent synthesis. Everybody always has something to add. But I would say that Lucan's A True History with its satirical voyage to the Moon is it good addition to the list of works of fantasy by ancient authors. English writers that were raised on a diet of Greek and Latin classics certainly knew of the work.
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman. A bit nervous of taking this on but will have a go.
Originally a reaction against 'Narnia' which he saw as Christian propaganda. But expanding into a towering multi-world vision (one of them being our own one). Strongly moral while also conspicuously anti religious. Visibly influenced by Paradise Lost and William Blake, neither of which/whom appear on your list though they might. Highly serious in that even the worst characters such as Mrs Coulter are morally ambiguous and the main heroine Lyra makes many errors of judgement and of morals. And full of original features such as characters having external souls in the form of animals, and warrior bears whose souls reside in their metal armour. The series is so knotty and original that it has I believe only very limited influence on (or from) the genre as a whole.
Typing on phone so feel free to add main verbs! My Substack 'About Mountains' has yet to cover fantasy though 'Sir Gawain' is on my schedule.
This is the quintessential Vertigo comic. While Alan Moore started the British Invasion with books like Saga of the Swamp Thing and Watchmen, his most popular books were the ones which subverted or played with superhero tropes.
Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman marked a stark contrast, as its pleasures have nothing to do with super heroics. Instead, the series showed comics readers what fantasy could do. It blended myths, anthropomorphism, and metaphysics, all the while introducing readers to a playful literary style that influences comics to this day.
Its playful literariness inspired whole generations of comics authors, encouraging them to expand their reading palette and utilize more mature fantasy themes in the comics they were creating.
EDIT: I feel like I’m struggling with tenses here. Please feel free to edit if it doesn’t sound quite right.
Ray Bradbury is typically thought of as a science fiction writer, which always troubled him, as he famously referred to even works like The Martian Chronicles as fantasy.
Something Wicked This Way Comes represents his clearest, most popular attempt at a fantasy novel, and it’s no surprise that it’s a tremendous success. Bradbury describes Green Town — an idyllic place that’s cozy and worthy of nostalgia — and then puts it in danger when the creepy figures of a traveling carnival come to town.
It makes the argument for Americana while contrasting it with the darkening perspective that any child must face when growing up.
Your subdivision categories are useful separations for future study in this area.
Thanks. :)
Hey Clifford, I'm loving this so far, especially how you've enlisted other stackers to comment in the piece where their expertise allows. It occurs to me that it would be pretty cool (if you're open to it) to keep this as a living document, where people could submit notes like the ones already included to be added as you see fit for works that have less content below the heading.
Absolutely! I will continue monitoring comments. I've already added about eight descriptions just now. The goal is to get to all 100!
One Black person, no hispanic people, and no Asian people. Dig a little deeper.
If you think a work was unfairly snubbed, let me know which one, why, and which you think it should replace.
There's no diversity quota for "influential," but I'm ready to edit this list if a sound argument is made. I wouldn't mind a little more diversity here either.
While i could argue the ones is on you to do the research since it's your list. Here's what I have so far:
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Kindred by Octavia Butler
Melissa by Milton J Davis
Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed
The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas
The GGM and OB suggestions are good. I had thought hard about both and will reconsider them in future iterations. The AD one isn't Fantasy, I don't think (maybe minor fantastical elements somewhere that I've never heard of?). Thank you for your suggestions.
Tarzan isn't Fantasy. Barsoom isn't. Winnie the Pooh isn't.
I think they still fit into the provision made in Caveat A. Again, I appreciate your suggestions. Definitely given me a couple of works to think about and reconsider. :)
Glad to help you think of some alternates.
Which ones did you have in mind?
It may be better if this list was titled "100 most influential titles for Western Fantasy" or something. Western Fantasy surely has some influence from other cultures (Arabian Nights, for example) but its influences will focus on Western authors.
Identifying the list this way would help address this criticism and also keep it focused -- "100 Years of Solitude" is Magical Realism, which is a distinctly Latin American fantasy genre with its own influences and canon.
Western Fantasy would also need to be mindful of influential writers from the African diaspora of the mid to late 20th century i would think. I really need to make my own list at some point.
I love your dedication to categorizing eras and works of fantasy literature and highlighting the importance of each work and what gives each its staying power over its peers. What an inspiration to those of us who strive to be literary fantasy movers.
I would offer the following on the significance of The Wind in the Willows:
Kenneth Graham's book of loosely-connected anthropomorphic stories paved the way for a slew of fantasy books/series with animals as main characters--Brian Jacques' Redwall, Erin Hunter's Warriors series, Robert O. Brien's Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, Richard Adams' Watership Down--as well as works that not only give animals human traits, but parallel lives alongside humans, such as T.H. White's The Sword in the Stone. Also, in Toad we find the (child-friendly) archetype of the lovable, morally-gray rapscallion. The vibes-over-plot-ness of TWitW makes this a progenitor of the cozy fantasy subgenre.
Awesome! I really didn't know much about that one, so that's a huge help, and I love the connection to Cozy Fantasy.
Almost forgot a big one—Tolkien drew on inspiration from TWitW when he was writing The Hobbit!
Really? I would not have guessed. Thank you!
I love this!! Saved for future reference to expand my reading list. It’s fun to see how genres and literary movements develop over time. And I love the addition of the Percy Jackson series on here, I read it as a really young kid and loved it so much I started reading it again the moment I finished it. I very much agree with Lewis and MacDonald that children’s books are real literature!
Most influential is a relatively subjective and rather difficult factor to nail down. And covering such a long time period just adds to how massive an undertaking this essay must have been. It’s clear you put a lot of time and effort into this, great work!
Thanks for the kind words and the acknowledgement of the effort. Truly it was a lot, but all worth it!
1. Conan The Barbarian - At their best, Robert E. Howard's stories show a prose style perfecting the language of adventure to give the plots the grandeur of legend infused with the grit of American pulp while portraying an outsider hero that readers could identify his alienation from civilization, and yet admire how his will and cunning allows him to carve his path in life.
When revived and reprinted as a paperback series in the 1960s, it set the tone for commercial fantasy for over 20 years before the rise of Sword of Shannara, The Belgariad, and other post-Tolkien series took over in publishing.
2. INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE was a game-changing novel in itself. The superhuman figures of the Anne Rice's sequels from THE VAMPIRE LESTAT onwards further developed the wish-fulfillment fantasy aspects hinted at in this novel, but INTERVIEW has more than that. It has absolute horror between its pages as we are introduced to the cabals of vampires who prey on 19th-century Europe and how they watch and assess who to kill and feast on in the grand theatres, with real sensuality in all the Southern Gothic meets Euro-horror atmosphere.
It violates taboos like the willful vampirization of children, and all told through the POV of someone grown distant to the sufferings of mortals. It made the queer subtext become the text for the readers of 1970s America. Vampire fiction and vampire movies can now be divided by one bloody line, pre-INTERVIEW and post-INTERVIEW.
3. Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn - At first glance, it seems another trilogy of door-stopper epic fantasy novels published trying to be another Tolkien, but Tad Williams incorporates other fantasy authors such as Mervyn Peake and Michael Moorcock influences in ways that subvert reader expectations.
Noble kings get corrupted, legends of heroic feats are exposed as lies, mighty warriors are near crippled with guilt over their deeds, court intrigue complicates the struggle, and the heroine does not save her virginity for the hero.
George R. R. Martin would take these ideas and lean more into them to more actively deconstruct epic fantasy. Still, Memory, Sorrow and Thorn are the first to call into question tropes and formulae that were ossifying the genre in hopes of rejuvenating it.
This is a gold mine! THANK YOU! Updating now.
This is a great project, and once it's finished this is going to be a super useful resource for fantasy readers to understand the history and evolution of the genre. For your final question, I'd say my favorite titles are Robin Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings, Le Guin's Earthsea, and Pratchett's Discworld. I want to read more stand-alone fantasy, so I'm adding a few of the books here to my TBR
Sorry about snubbing Hobb (for now). She still has a chance in the final iteration for sure, though. Need to do a tad more research into all that.
This list is awesome, thanks for putting it together. It's so helpful to get a chronological feel for the genre and how it's developed over time.
Thanks! Glad it's useful.
The Song of Roland not on the list, eh?
I had to cut off the progenitor and preconstruction Fantasy somewhere... :P
Shoulda cut Twilight. Barf.
If I was listing "best," absolutely. But can't deny its influence.
I'll put some words in for the Dragonlance novels, particularly the first "Chronicles" trilogy.
------------------------
These novels set the standard for Dungeons & Dragons based "realm" franchises, where a certain universe and key heroic characters are known throughout a continuity but various stories could branch out from there. Krynn has a map and a shared history. The mainline Heroes of the Lance and their progeny are handled by the core writers Weis & Hickman, whereas other fantasy writers can build off of the 'module' to create their own epics, such as the Dwarven Nations Trilogy by Dan Parkinson which contains no reference to the Heroes of the Lance at all but tells a multigenerational history of dwarven kingdom consolidation using the rules of the realm developed by Weis & Hickman.
It's connection with Dungeons & Dragons cannot be understated. The authors started it out both as a module for the tabletop roleplaying game and built the stories and the world around D&D's key mechanics. The "Chronicles" trilogy contains a key adventuring party built out of a fairly standard Dungeons & Dragons group. Raistlin the Mage and Goldmoon the Cleric stand beside Tasslehoff the kinder (halfling) rogue and Flint the dwarven fighter and Fizban the paladin, and so forth.
Dragonlance not only modeled around Dungeons & Dragons but modeled how to play Dungeons & Dragons for many later players. Other realm franchises were more explicitly developed by Wizards of the Coast for Dungeons & Dragons player modules with backstory, particularly the Forgotten Realms books.
----------------------------
How's that work for you?
That's amazing. I was so dreading having to research that HUGE series, and this is amazingly helpful. Thank you!
With regard to the Wizard of Oz, isn't it one of the earliest examples of a fantasy novel that developed into a series involving a shared universe? (14 books in all) I think so. I see references to George A. McDonald in that regard, but in that case, we're talking about two related books. Obviously, a lot of later fantasy writers followed that trend.
The Wizard of Oz also may be the first fantasy book to become a movie after the introduction of sound. (Silent films did adapt the Nibelung--since we're mentioning epic poems--1001 Arabian Nights, and the Sorrows of Satan, among others). WoO may also be the first fantasy novel to become a Broadway musical, long before indirectly inspiring another Broadway musical. so in terms of bringing fantasy to other mediums, it could be considered a pioneer.
Anyway, I love what you're doing with this, but perhaps it might be better to allow the list to rise to 200 instead of swapping titles out if someone suggests an addition. (You have more self-discipline that I have to have gotten it down to 100 in the first place, but if you want to make it more representative of other cultures, that 100 line is going to be hard to hold without losing some really valuable titles.)
If we're using epic poetry as inspirations for fantasy, it would seem the two great Indian epics, the Mahabarata and the Bhagadad Gita, should be included, though I don't know enough about the Indian literary scene to know how influential they have been on fantasy literature, and of course, using texts from living religions opens up a whole new can of worms. You'd really then need to list the Bible, not as fantasy literature itself, but as an undoubted influence. How many fantasy novels involve angels, demons, saints, and other aspects of the Judeo-Christian tradition, not to mention Christian allegories like the Narnia books (and, of course, Milton's Paradise Lost).
Speaking of which, pacts with the devil are a fairly common theme, so how about Marlowe's Faustus, not the earliest, but certainly the most influence literary work on the subject up to that point and an undoubted influence on Goethe's Faust? A lesser influence on that theme but a much better known play, Macbeth features witches, prophecies, etc., and Macbeth doesn't exactly make a deal with the witches but is tricked by them, much as people are always tricked by the devil.
In terms of structural influences, Ovid's Metamorphoses is the first example of a frame story (in fantasy or otherwise). Its successors include Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (with several fantasy elements of its own) and the previously mentioned 1001 Nights.
it also seems as if at least one of the Norse works that so influenced Tolkien should be on the list.
I have to stop now. But you can see why I could never pull together the discipline do a list capped at 100. I've thought of 20 more possibilities beyond the ones I've mentioned just while I'm sitting here. So kudos for having the willpower to stick to your own limits.
So many good ideas here, and very smart to just raise the limit. I will keep this in mind!
Without The Dying Earth, Dungeons and Dragons would look a lot different (The "Vancian Magic" system comes right from Dying Earth.) Without Jack Vance, I doubt there would be Book of the New Sun, as he was such an influence on Gene Wolfe. I love Jack Vance so much. I think he's hugely underrated, but admittedly he is a bit of a "writer's writer." Not everyone gets his style. My favourite fantasy series is his Lyonesse trilogy, written much later in his career vs The Dying Earth, and I highly recommend it. It's very Fairy Tale—and very Vancian.
Mind if I use this to add info to that entry? Very interesting stuff!!
Sure! Also here's some more info on Vance's influence on dnd:
https://goodman-games.com/blog/2022/03/11/jack-vances-influence-on-dungeons-dragons/
Thanks! Adding now!
An excellent synthesis. Everybody always has something to add. But I would say that Lucan's A True History with its satirical voyage to the Moon is it good addition to the list of works of fantasy by ancient authors. English writers that were raised on a diet of Greek and Latin classics certainly knew of the work.
Very good! Thank you for the suggestion. Will consider it for the final version.
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman. A bit nervous of taking this on but will have a go.
Originally a reaction against 'Narnia' which he saw as Christian propaganda. But expanding into a towering multi-world vision (one of them being our own one). Strongly moral while also conspicuously anti religious. Visibly influenced by Paradise Lost and William Blake, neither of which/whom appear on your list though they might. Highly serious in that even the worst characters such as Mrs Coulter are morally ambiguous and the main heroine Lyra makes many errors of judgement and of morals. And full of original features such as characters having external souls in the form of animals, and warrior bears whose souls reside in their metal armour. The series is so knotty and original that it has I believe only very limited influence on (or from) the genre as a whole.
Typing on phone so feel free to add main verbs! My Substack 'About Mountains' has yet to cover fantasy though 'Sir Gawain' is on my schedule.
Wonderful stuff! Thank you! Adding it now.
Definite classics missing: Raymond Feist, David Eddings, Piers Anthony, and who can forget everyone's first fantasy read Dragonlance Chronicles???
Dragonlance is on there, but, yeah, I figured Feist and Eddings at least would be missed. Hard decision for sure...
The Sandman -
This is the quintessential Vertigo comic. While Alan Moore started the British Invasion with books like Saga of the Swamp Thing and Watchmen, his most popular books were the ones which subverted or played with superhero tropes.
Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman marked a stark contrast, as its pleasures have nothing to do with super heroics. Instead, the series showed comics readers what fantasy could do. It blended myths, anthropomorphism, and metaphysics, all the while introducing readers to a playful literary style that influences comics to this day.
Its playful literariness inspired whole generations of comics authors, encouraging them to expand their reading palette and utilize more mature fantasy themes in the comics they were creating.
EDIT: I feel like I’m struggling with tenses here. Please feel free to edit if it doesn’t sound quite right.
Something Wicked This Way Comes -
Ray Bradbury is typically thought of as a science fiction writer, which always troubled him, as he famously referred to even works like The Martian Chronicles as fantasy.
Something Wicked This Way Comes represents his clearest, most popular attempt at a fantasy novel, and it’s no surprise that it’s a tremendous success. Bradbury describes Green Town — an idyllic place that’s cozy and worthy of nostalgia — and then puts it in danger when the creepy figures of a traveling carnival come to town.
It makes the argument for Americana while contrasting it with the darkening perspective that any child must face when growing up.
Okay, legitimately, this book just jumped way up on my TBR because of your description.
Both descriptions added!
Solid insights. Thank you!