"By the Book" is a weekly section in the New York Times' Book World section. What strikes me about all those writers interviewed over the years is the extent to which they are narrowly influenced by US books. It is so rare to find one writer who reads a foreign language and it is very rare to find one writer who says that he/she is influenced by a non-American (or non-British) writer. Culture in the US is so narrow and so focused on presidential biographies which always pass in this patriotic country as the highest form of literature.