The lure of impossible things -- Tarzan begins his reign -- A modernist moment -- D. W. Griffith, the birth of a nation -- Robert Frost -- The philosopher and the millionaire -- Mamie Smith's “Crazy Blues'' -- Jean Toomer -- T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence -- Chaplinesque -- F. O. Matthiessen meets Russell Cheney -- The Johnson-Reed Act and ethnic literature -- The Great Gatsby -- Sinclair Lewis -- The Scopes trial -- Dorothy Parker -- Fire!! -- Hardboiled -- The Book-of-the-Month Club -- Carl Sandburg and the American Songbag -- “Free to develop their faculties'' --

Dilsey Gibson goes to church -- John Dos Passos -- The mouse that whistled -- “You're swell!'' -- The Silent Enemy -- Grant Wood's American Gothic -- Nevada legalizes gambling -- The American Jitters -- Andrea Most -- The River Rouge plant and industrial beauty -- Ned Cobb -- Baby Face is censored -- FDR's first Fireside Chat -- Robert Penn Warren -- The Popular Front -- The skyscraper -- Alcoholics Anonymous -- Porgy and Bess -- Gone with the Wind and Absalom, Absalom! -- Two days in Harlem -- Life begins -- Superman -- Jelly Roll Morton speaks --

Billie Holiday, “Strange Fruit” -- Up from invisibility -- “No way like the American way” -- Preston Sturges -- An insolent style -- Citizen Kane -- The word “multicultural” -- Hemingway's paradise, Hemingway's prose -- The second Bill of Rights -- Bebop -- Thomas Pynchon and modern war -- The atom bomb -- Integrating the military -- Tennessee Williams -- Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics -- Saul Bellow -- “The Birth of the Cool'' -- “Damned busy painting'' -- A poet among painters -- The Catcher in the Rye -- James Jones, from here to eternity --

A soft voice -- Elia Kazan and the blacklist in Hollywood -- C. L. R. James -- The song in country music -- Wallace Stevens, collected poems -- “The self-respect of my people'' -- A. J. Liebling and the Marciano-Moore fight -- A generation in miniature -- Nabokov's Lolita -- “Roll Over Beethoven” -- Dr. Seuss -- “Nobody's perfect'' -- Psycho -- More than a game -- JFK's inaugural address and Catch-22 -- The author as advertisement -- Bob Dylan writes “Song to Woody'' -- “White elephant art vs. termite art'' -- “Letter from Birmingham Jail” -- “For the union dead'' -- “The last stand on Earth'' -- The Council on Interracial Books for Children -- The Autobiography of Malcolm X -- Norman Mailer -- The illusory babels of language -- The plight of conservative literature --

Elizabeth Bishop, complete poems -- The first Asian Americans -- The eye of Vietnam -- Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker -- Linda Lovelace -- Loisaida literature -- Adrienne Rich, diving into the wreck -- Gayl Jones -- Toni Morrison -- Edmund White, a boy's own story -- Wild Style -- Maya Lin's wall -- Harriet Wilson -- Henry Roth -- Maxine Hong Kingston, tripmaster monkey -- Philip Roth -- Twenty-first-century free verse -- Richard Powers, the time of our singing -- Hurricane Katrina -- Barack Obama.