I. History
Contributors to this section
from One hundred years of Harper's / Frederick Lewis Allen
from The century / Bernard De Voto
from Early migrations westward / Woodrow Wilson
from Sherman's great march / George Ward Nichols
The march to the sea, a poem / Herman Melville
from The big change / Frederick Lewis Allen
from Extracts from Adam's diary / Mark Twain
from On fear: the South in labor / William Faulkner
from The great Wall Street crash / John Kenneth Galbraith
from One man's meat / E.B. White
from The decision to use the atomic bomb / Henry L. Stimson
Mushrooms, a poem / Sylvia Plath
The true confessions of Henry Pell, a story
John Cheever
The death of Salvador Allende / Gabriel García Marquez
II. Places
Contributors to this section
from The plains as I crossed them ten years ago / Horace Greeley
from The new Sequoia forests of California / John Muir
Two new poems / William Carlos Williams
from Arizona Desert / J.B. Priestly
from Flood in the desert / Bernard De Voto
from Environmentalism and the leisure class / William Tucker
Wood odors, a poem / Walt Whitman
from Southern California / William Henry Bishop
from Palm Springs: wind, sand, and stars / Cleveland Armory
from New Orleans mon amour / Walker Percy
from The strangest place in Chicago / John Bartlow Martin
Weather note, a poem / Babette Deutsch
from Stranger in the village / James Baldwin
from A little girl's New York / Edith Wharton
from Washington monument by night, a poem / Carl Sandburg
from New York revisited / Henry James
from Newport: there she sits / Cleveland Armory
Fire and Ice: a poem / Robert Frost
from One man's meat / E.B. White
A death in the country, a story
Stephen Vincent Benét
III. Policy and Politics
Contributors to this section
from Unwritten rules of american politics / John Fischer
from Why should the majority rule / Walter Lippman
The philosophers, a poem
Robert Graves
from What Hitler wants / Leon Trotsky
from The meaning of treason
Rebecca West
from One man's meat
E.B. White
Under which lyre, a poem / W.H. Auden
from The suffragettes / William Dean Howells
from Capital punishment / William Dean Howells
Colonel Starbottle for the plaintiff / Bret Harte
from Liten, Yankee / C. Wright Mills
Long view: negro, a poem / Langston Hughes
from Our long honesty / George Bernard Shaw
The knife and the naked chalk, a story / Rudyard Kipling
from Gilding the news / Lewis H. Lapham
IV. Society
Contibutors to this section
Highbrow, lowbrow, middlebrow / Russell Lynes
Listen to this, dear / James Thurber
from America's medieval women / Pearl S. Buck
To praisers of women, a poem / Archibald Macleish
from One man's meat / E.B. White
The wide net, a story / Eudora Welty
from For the wayward and beguiled / Bernard De Voto
from Thrice Married
Bloodstains, a story
Joyce Carol Oates
V. Portraits
Contributors to this section
from the integrity of American character / Grover Cleveland
from Was my life worth living / Emma Goldmann
from Advice to a young scientist / P.B. Medawar
from Who are you / Aldous Huxley
from Henry James and the artist in America / W.H. Auden
from A very stern discipline, an interview / Ralph Ellison
from President Harry / Richard H. Rovere
from Gertrude Stein: a self portrait / Katherine Anne Porter
Barker's wild oats / George Bernard Shaw
from Son and lover, early letters / D.H. Lawrence
from The silent generation / Thornton Wilder
Giacomo Joyce, a study of love / James Joyce
from Edward Kennedy and the romance of death
Lewis H. Lapham
The hope chest, a story / Jean Stafford
from Psychoanalysts and writers / Malcolm Cowley
The scientist as prophet / Loren Eisley.