Blood Meridian

Cormac McCarthy's 1985 novel, drawn from historical events on the Texas-Mexico border, follows the Kid, a fourteen-year-old from Tennessee who runs away and is swept into a world of violence on the American frontier. Much of the story follows him among the Glanton gang, a historical band of scalp hunters who killed Indigenous people for bounty. At the center of the bloodshed stands Judge Holden, a massive, hairless, highly educated man who seems almost supernatural. Classed as an anti-Western and a Gothic Western, it was McCarthy's fifth book and met a lukewarm first reception before coming to be widely seen as his magnum opus.

Jocko Willink said in Tools of Titans that he has read it multiple times. Bryan Callen named it among his top three recommended reads.