CONTENT OVERVIEW

SIX ESSAYS

The American Dream
Melting Pot to Mosaic
Crisis of Faith
Violence
The Color Line
The Forbidden

BOOK SYNOPSIS

1. The Power of Sympathy, William Hill Brown (1789)
2. The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper (1826)
3. The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)
4. Moby Dick, Herman Melville (1851)
5. Uncle Tomšs Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852)
6. The American, Henry James (1877)
7. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain (1884)
8. A Hazard of New Fortunes, William Dean Howells (1890)
9. The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane (1895)
10. The Awakening, Kate Chopin (1899)
11. Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser (1900)
12. The Octopus, Frank Norris (1901)
13. The Call of the Wild, Jack London (1903)
14. The Jungle, Upton Sinclair (1906)
15. My Ántonia, Willa Cather (1918)
16. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton (1920) Pulitzer 1921
17. Arrowsmith, Sinclair Lewis (1925) Nobel 1930 (first American); Pulitzer 1926
18. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
19. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner (1929) Nobel 1949; Pulitzer for A Fable (1955)
20. The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck (1931) Nobel 1938 (first American woman to win); Pulitzer 1932
21. Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neal Hurston (1937)
22. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck (1939) Nobel 1962; Pulitzer 1940
23. Native Son, Richard Wright (1940)
24. Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men (1946)
25. The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer (1948)
26. The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger (1951)
27. The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway (1952) Nobel 1954; Pulitzer 1953
28. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison (1952)
29. The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow (1953) Nobel 1976; Pulitzer for Humboldtšs Gift 1976
30. Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin (1953)
31. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
32. On the Road, Jack Kerouac (1957)
33. Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (1957)
34. Rabbit, Run, John Updike (1960) Pulitzer 1982 for Rabbit is Rich and in 1991 for Rabbit At Rest
35. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee (1960) Pulitzer 1961
36. Truman Capote In Cold Blood (1965)
37. Joyce Carol Oates, them (1969, National Book Award winner)
38. Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
39. Joan Didion, Play It as It Lays (1970)
40. The Optimistšs Daughter, Eudora Welty (1972) Pulitzer 1973
41. China Men, Maxine Hong Kingston (1980)
42. The Color Purple, Alice Walker (1982) Pulitzer 1983
43. Ironweed, William Kennedy (1983) Pulitzer 1984
44. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
45. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987) Nobel 1993; Pulitzer 1988
46. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
47. Philip Roth, American Pastoral (1997)
48. Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections (2001)
49. Edward P. Jones, The Known World (2003)
50. Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (2004)

MOVEMENTS
American Literary Movements
Romanticism, 1828-1865
Transcendentalism, 1840-1860
Realism, 1865-1910
Naturalism, 1893-1914
Modernist period, 1890-1945
Lost Generation, 1914-1930
Harlem Renaissance, 1919-1930
Postmodernism, 1945-present
Beat Generation, 1948-1962
Contemporary, 1960-present

TEXT AND CONTEXT

The American Dream
Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton

From Melting Pot to Mosaic
Native Speaker - Chang-rae Lee

The Problem of the Color Line
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
Uncle Tomšs Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe

Crises of Faith
Go Tell It on the Mountain - James Baldwin
Wise Blood - Flannery O'Connor

Violence
The Bear - William Faulkner

The Forbidden
Portnoyšs Complaint - Philip Roth
Rubyfruit Jungle - Rita Mae Brown

SYMBOLS

Moby Dick, Herman Melville (1851)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain (1884)
The Awakening, Kate Chopin (1899)
The Call of the Wild, Jack London (1903)
Arrowsmith, Sinclair Lewis (1925)
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck (1939) Nobel 1962; Pulitzer 1940
Native Son, Richard Wright (1940)
The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway (1952) Nobel 1954; Pulitzer 1953
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand (1957)
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee (1960) Pulitzer 1961
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
Play It as It Lays, Joan Didion (1970)
The Color Purple, Alice Walker (1982) Pulitzer 1983
The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987) Nobel 1993; Pulitzer 1988
Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
Edward P. Jones, The Known World (2003)
Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (2004)

TIMELINE

Date/Historical Event/Mags and Awards
1619-1865 Slavery 1789 Constitution goes into effect
GW becomes first U.S. president
1791 Bill of Rights ratified
1803 Louisiana Purchase
1812-1814 War with Britain
1821-1969 Saturday Evening Post founded
1830 Indian Removal Act
1846-1848 Mexican-American War
1848-1854 Gold Rush
1850 Fugitive Slave Act
Harper's Monthly Magazine founded
1853-1857 Putnam's Monthly Magazine
1857 Atlantic Monthly founded
1861-1865 Civil War
1863 Homestead Act
1869 Transcontinental railroad established
1887-1939 Scribner's Magazine
1890 Battle at Wounded Knee or Wounded Knee Massacre
1890-1930 The Smart Set
1892 Ellis Island Immigration Center opens
1896 Plessy v. Ferguson -- racial segregation constitutional
1898 Spanish-American War
1901 First Nobel Prize in Literature awarded
1914-1918World War I
1918 First Pulitzer Prize for Fiction awarded
1919-1933 Prohibition
1919 Women get the right to vote -- 19th Amendment passed
1920s Jazz Age
1925 The New Yorker established
1927 First solo transatlantic flight
1929-1940 Great Depression
1930-1960 U.S. Labor Movement
1939-1945 World War II
1945-1992 Cold War
1950 First National Book Award for Fiction awarded
1950-1953 Korean War
1950-1954 McCarthyism
1954-1965 Civil Rights
1956-1975 Vietnam War
1962 Cuban Missile Crisis
1964 Civil Rights Act
1965 Voting Rights Act
1966-1982 Women's Liberation Movement
1969 Moon landing
1974 President Nixon resigns
1979-1981 Iranian Hostage Crisis
1980 First PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction awarded
1981 IBM PC is launched
First cases of AIDS reported
1990s First WWW pages established
1991 Gulf War1993NAFTA becomes law
1998-1999 Clinton Impeachment
2000 Contested presidential election
20019/11 terrorist attacks
2003-Iraq War

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