[KC Burke]

Democracy in America, de Tocqueville.

[YogicCowboy]

Good choice.

[TexasKamaAina]

I agree - Democracy in America was the first book that came to my mind. Although I think demographic changes have made it a little less relevant, it should be a good introduction to American society for another 20-30 years - until the demographics overtake the culture.

[LurkedLongEnough]

Democracy in America, de Tocqueville.

I second Democracy in America, de Tocqueville.

[x]

Democracy in America, de Tocqueville

Good choice. The best choice, even though it's 180-odd years old.

Distant competitors might be Crevecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer and Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography.

At some point in history it got hard to write about "America" as a whole.

Maybe Henry James or Mark Twain or Hemingway or Fitzgerald had something to say in fiction about the American character.

For the closest thing to a modern Tocqueville maybe we have to go back to David Reisman's The Lonely Crowd.

[glennaro]

Second that, too.