This singular collection is nothing less than a political, spiritual, and intensely personal record of America's tumultuous modern age by our foremost critics, commentators, activists, and artists. In her introduction to this volume, Joyce Carol Oates describes her project as "a search for the expression of personal experience within the historical, the individual talent within the tradition." Along with Robert Atwan, who has overseen the acclaimed BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS series since its inception in 1986, Oates has chosen a list of works that are both intimate and important, essays that take on subjects of profound and universal significance while retaining the power and spirit of a personal address. This collection honors some of the twentieth century's best-known and best-loved writers on a breathtaking variety of topics. In a journalistic mode, Ernest Hemingway covers the bullfights in Pamplona, H. L. Mencken reacts to the Scopes trial, and Michael Herr dodges bullets in a helicopter over Vietnam. Nowhere is the intersection of our personal and political histories more meaningful than when the subject is Americas enduring legacy of racial strife, as shown by Richard Wrights "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow," James Baldwins "Notes of a Native Son," Zora Neale Hurstons "How It Feels to Be Colored Me," and others. The wonders and horrors of science, nature, and the cosmos are explored with eloquence, bravery, and beauty when Lewis Thomas writes about "The Lives of a Cell," Rachel Carson mulls "The Marginal World," and Stephen Jay Gould preaches evolution and baseball in "The Creation Myths of Cooperstown." Taken together, these essays fit, in the words of Joyce Carol Oates, "into a kind of mobile mosaic suggest[ing] where we've come from, and who we are, and where we are going."Mark Twain - W.E.B. Du Bois - Henry Adams - John Muir - William James - Randolph Bourne - John Jay Chapman - Jane Addams - T. S. Eliot - Ernest Hemingway - H. L. Mencken - Zora Neale Hurston - Edmund Wilson - Gertrude Stein - F. Scott Fitzgerald - James Thurber - Richard Wright - James Agee - Robert Frost - E. B. White - S. J. Perelman - Langston Hughes - Katherine Anne Porter - Mary McCarthy - Rachel Carson - James Baldwin - Loren Eiseley - Eudora Welty - Donald Hall - Martin Luther King, Jr. - Tom Wolfe - Susan Sontag - Vladimir Nabokov - N. Scott Momaday - Elizabeth Hardwick - Michael Herr - Maya Angelou - Lewis Thomas - John McPhee - William H. Gass - Maxine Hong Kingston - Alice Walker - Adrienne Rich - Joan Didion - Richard Rodriguez - Gretel Ehrlich - Annie Dillard - Cynthia Ozick - William Manchester - Edward Hoagland - Stephen Jay Gould - Gerald Early - John Updike - Joyce Carol Oates - Saul Bellow Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

"Here is a history of America told in many voices," declares Oates in her introduction, revealing the heart of her intelligent and incisive collection of 55 essays by American writers. Never attempting to capture or replicate a single, authentic "American identity," this collection succeeds by producing a comprehensive and multifaceted look at what America has been and, by extension, what it is and might become. While it's not explicitly political, the volume's multicultural intentions are visible. Beginning with "Cone-pone Opinions," a 1901 Mark Twain essay that uses the wisdom of an African-American child as its central image, Oates has fashioned a collection that calls attention to the way that "America" is made up of competing, and often antagonistic, cultural and social visions. There is not only the apparent contrast between the populist, overtly political visions of W.E.B. Du Bois's "Of the Coming of John," James Baldwin's "Notes of a Native Son" and Mary McCarthy's "Artists in Uniform" and the cultural elitism of T.S. Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent." Oates has managed to find numerous pieces whose vision and philosophy resonate with one another without becoming homogeneous, so Gretel Ehrlich's meditation on pastoral aesthetics in "The Solace of Open Spaces" contrasts abruptly and ingeniously with Susan Sontag's urban-centered "Notes on Camp." In all, Oates has assembled a provocative collection of masterpieces reflecting both the fragmentation and surprising cohesiveness of various American identities. QPB and History Book Club selections; BOMC alternate. (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

One of the pleasures of an anthology like this is reading people you might not otherwise have picked up. Like John Muir, whose "Stickeen," a life-and-death adventure on an Alaskan glacier with a singular small black dog, is a great piece of adventure writing. Or Jane Addams, whose insights into the spread of an urban legend of "The Devil Baby at Hull House" are thoughtful and compassionate. Another sort of pleasure comes from rereading familiar works in a new context: E.B. White's "Once More to the Lake," N. Scott Momaday's "The Way to Rainy Mountain," John McPhee's "The Search for Marvin Gardens," and Annie Dillard's "Total Eclipse." Only seven of the essays come from the annual "Best American Essays" series that Atwan has coedited since 1986. The other 48 were culled from the rest of the century, with the ruling idea, Atwan says, "that the essays should speak to the present, not merely represent the past." Oates looked "for the expression of personal experience within the historical." They have created a mosaic of a century in an America whose dominant and recurring theme has been race. Essential for most libraries.DMary Paumier Jones, Westminster P.L., CO Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Joyce Carol Oates -- novelist, essayist, critic, poet, playwright, and teacher -- is one of our preeminent literary figures and social critics. She has written more than forty novels and novellas, among them the 1970 National Book Award winner Them, as well as several volumes of poetry, many plays, and five books of literary criticism. She has been a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters since 1978
Robery Atwan has been the series editor of The Best American Essays since its inception in 1986. He has edited numerous literary anthologies and written essays and reviews for periodicals nationwide. He has recently edited Chapters into Verse, a collection of poetry inspired by the Bible, and Divine Inspiration, a volume of world poetry on the Gospels Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Foreword	p. x
Introduction	p. xvii
1901: Corn-pone Opinions	p. 1
1903: Of the Coming of John	p. 6
1906: A Law of Acceleration	p. 20
1909: Stickeen	p. 28
1910: The Moral Equivalent of War	p. 45
1911: The Handicapped	p. 57
1912: Coatesville	p. 71
1916: The Devil Baby at Hull-House	p. 75
1919: Tradition and the Individual Talent	p. 90
1923: Pamplona in July	p. 98
1925: The Hills of Zion	p. 107
1928: How It Feels to Be Colored Me	p. 114
1933: The Old Stone House	p. 118
1935: What Are Master-pieces and Why Are There So Few of Them	p. 131
1936: The Crack-Up	p. 139
1937: Sex Ex Machina	p. 153
1937: The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch	p. 159
1938: Knoxville: Summer of 1915	p. 171
1939: The Figure a Poem Makes	p. 176
1941: Once More to the Lake	p. 179
1944: Insert Flap "A" and Throw Away	p. 186
1949: Bop	p. 190
1950: The Future Is Now	p. 193
1953: Artists in Uniform	p. 199
1955: The Marginal World	p. 214
1955: Notes of a Native Son	p. 220
1956: The Brown Wasps	p. 239
1957: A Sweet Devouring	p. 246
1961: A Hundred Thousand Straightened Nails	p. 252
1963: Letter from Birmingham Jail	p. 263
1964: Putting Daddy On	p. 280
1964: Notes on "Camp"	p. 288
1966: Perfect Past	p. 303
1967: The Way to Rainy Mountain	p. 313
1968: The Apotheosis of Martin Luther King	p. 319
1969: Illumination Rounds	p. 327
1970: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings	p. 342
1971: The Lives of a Cell	p. 358
1972: The Search for Marvin Gardens	p. 361
1972: The Doomed in Their Sinking	p. 373
1975: No Name Woman	p. 383
1975: Looking for Zora	p. 395
1977: Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying	p. 412
1979: The White Album	p. 421
1980: Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood	p. 447
1981: The Solace of Open Spaces	p. 467
1982: Total Eclipse	p. 477
1982: A Drugstore in Winter	p. 490
1987: Okinawa: The Bloodiest Battle of All	p. 497
1988: Heaven and Nature	p. 507
1989: The Creation Myths of Cooperstown	p. 520
1990: Life with Daughters: Watching the Miss America Pageant	p. 532
1993: The Disposable Rocket	p. 549
1995: They All Just Went Away	p. 553
1997: Graven Images	p. 564
Biographical Notes	p. 569
Appendix Notable Twentieth-Century American Literary Nonfiction	p. 591

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