Here are the vivid impressions of three hundred extraordinary men and women who saw the story of America, from Columbus to Cyberspace. Their accounts - expertly gathered from diaries, private letters, memoirs, and reportage - bring America's decisive and defining moments to life as only first-hand reports can.

These flashes of history have been captured by eyewitnesses like Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Malcolm X, Hunter S. Thompson, and hundreds of others who were at the right place at the right time, with their eyes wide open and a gift for telling about it in sharp, memorable detail.

From all these moments, over five centuries, a compelling portrait appears. Patterns emerge to reveal the themes that run through American life: the eternal pursuit of the quick buck; the urge to negotiate a perfect society; and the national need for speed, in everything from the Pony Express to jet planes to the Internet.