American Psycho is the story of Patrick Bateman, a young investment banker who works on Wall Street in the 1980s. The narrative follows Bateman as he lives an empty, yuppie lifestyle by day and goes on sadistic murder sprees by night, gradually descending into an unstable world where the lines between reality and fantasy are blurred. This controversial novel is a critique of capitalism, the shallowness of materialism, and the numbness created by the 1980s consumer culture.
Democracy in America is an examination of American society by the French political philosopher, Alexis de Tocqueville. The two-volume work examines the continual progress of democracy and equality over the past seven hundred years and attempts to explain why the republican form of government in the US has lasted so long. Tocqueville discusses equality, the middle class, national sovereignty, both the constraints and relative freedom of American women, the separation of church and state and threats to American democracy.