本书在参考国内同类书籍的基础上，针对英语专业复合型人才培养的特定需要和教学的实际情况，精选了从殖民地时期到20世纪末的24位重要作家的代表作品，在体裁上兼顾小说、诗歌、戏剧与散文。全书按照历史发展顺序展开，涵盖了从本杰明·富兰克林到托马斯·品钦等美国文学各重要时期代表作家的作品，内容包括作者简介、作品选读、作品注释、赏析思考题和文学知识等。

Chapter 1 American Literature Before the Nineteenth Century
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
Autobiography
Chapter 2 American Literature in the Romantic Period
Washington Irving (1783-1859)
Pip Van Winkle
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Walden
Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)
The Raven
Annabelle Lee
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
Dr. Rappaccini's Daughter
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
I Sit and Look Out
One's-Self I Sing
Chapter 3 American Literature of the Realist and Naturalistic Periods
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Henry James (1843-1916)
Daisy Miller
Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)
Sister Carrie
Chapter 4 American Literature in the Modern Period
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
The Road Not Taken
Mending Wall
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
The Great Gatsby
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
A Clean Well-lighted House
William Faulkner (1897-1962)
A Rose for Emily
Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953)
Long Day's Journey into Night
Chapter 5 Ameriean Literature After World War II
Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)
A Streetcar Named Desire
J. D. Salinger (1919-2010)
The Catcher in the Rye
Thomas Pynchon (1937-)
Entropy
Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)
A Supermarket in California
Toni Morrison (1931-2019)
Home
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991)
Gimpel the Fool
Saul Bellow (1915-2005)
A Father-To-Be
Maxine Hong Kingston (1940-)
Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts
Alice Walker (1944-)
Everyday Use
Bibliography