Louis Menand’s _The Metaphysical Club_, from 2001. It is a combined history of William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and their later acolyte, John Dewey, as well as of their related ideas, which go by the shorthands Pragmatism and Pluralism. Although a formal history, Menand is a fine writer and there’s much practical philosophy in here, much of which serves as the wellspring for other contemporary books cited in comments here. It was a great book for understanding America, strains of American thought, and how not to be wrong.