From the American Revolution to the present day, public oratory has profoundly shaped American history and culture-not only our politics but our language and our sense of national identity. Edited by
"The most powerful and enduring work of art ever written about American slavery." -Alfred Kazin When Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1862, he greeted her as "the little woman who wrote t
"Emerson's prose is his triumph, both as eloquence and as insight. After Shakespeare, it matches anything else in the language." -Harold Bloom Here are Ralph Waldo Emerson's classic essays, including
"Perhaps the most remarkable book in the American canon. As dense as scripture, crowded with aphorism, Walden is full enough of ideas for a score of ordinary books." -Bill McKibben In 1845 Henry David
"Few books make history and fewer still become foundational texts for the movements and struggles of an entire people. The Souls of Black Folk occupies this rare position." --Manning Marable W.E.B. D
"If there is a more highly regarded female American author of the twentieth century, her name doesn't readily come to mind." --John Updike Born in 1862 into an exclusive New York society-against whos
?Mark Twain was the first truly American writer, and all of us since are his heirs.?--William FaulknerA brilliant amalgam of remembrance and reportage, by turns satiric, celebratory, nostalgic, and me
Here in one authoritative volume are Willa Cather's essential masterpieces: the story collection The Troll Garden, along with the beloved novels O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Ántonia. "Let
