本书针对的是美国中考（SSAT）阅读板块的美国文学相关知识学习，内容为美国早期以及近现代作者知名文学作品的合集，主要为了迎合SSAT考试中阅读部分考试的需求。为了方便实际阅读与备考，本书收集了SSAT考试中出现的与美国文学相关的阅读题材，包括诗歌、历史、美国历史与政治、女性话题、艺术等，同时也将考试中常考的各种阅读题型融入各类题材中。全书以素材为主，摒弃以技巧为核心的学习方式，为读者准备足够的练习，增加其实际能力。

王锐，北美考试宗师级人物，著名美国留学规划专家。国际关系学院国际文化与传播专业高材生，主修英美语言与文学，布莱恩特奖学金获得者。求学期间有辛承蒙著名语言学家吴中东教授的指导，受益良深。
对SSAT，TOEFL，SAT，ACT，GMAT等北美考试教学研究十余年，是这方面名副其实的专家。近年来，致力于英美诗歌鉴赏、文法与写作、文化与翻译、艺术史的研究，深得学术界广泛认可，为我国北美考试教学向专业化过渡打开了一个新的局面。相信不久，同学们就可以欣赏到相关著作。
授课生动流畅，旁征博引，重点突出，直击人心；教学注重理论与实践的结合。应试方法奇特有效，讲究立竿见影，深受同学们的欢迎与喜爱。

Chapter 1 Early America
Christopher Columbus
John Smith
William Bradford
John Winthrop
Anne Bradstreet
Edward Taylor
Jonathan Edwards
Chapter 2 Reason and Revolution
Benjamin Franklin
Patrick Henry
Thomas Jefferson
Philip Freneau
Thomas Paine
Jean de Crevecoeur
Olaudah Equiano
Phillis Wheatley
Francis Scott Key
Chapter 3 Native Grounds
Washington Irving
James Fenimore Cooper
William Cullen Bryant
Edgar Allan Poe
Chapter 4 New England Renaissance
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Herman Melville
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Oliver Wendell Holmes
James Russell Lowell
John Greenleaf Whittier
Chapter 5 Conflict and Celebration
Frederick Douglass
Mary Boykin Chesnut
Robert E. Lee
Abraham Lincoln
Chief Joseph
Walt Whitman
Emily Dickinson
Mark Twain
Jacob A. Riis
Chapter 6 Regionalism and Realism
Bret Harte
Sarah Orne Jewett
Lyman Frank Baum
Kate Chopin
Hamlin Garland
O. Henry
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Jack London
Sidney Lanier
Edwin Arlington Robins
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Stephen Crane
Helen Keller
Theodore Dreiser
Henry James
Upton Sinclair
Chapter 7 New Directions
Ezra Pound
Amy Lowell
Thomas Steams Eliot
William Carlos Williams
Hilda Doolittle
Gertrude Stein
Carl Sandburg
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edgar Lee Masters
Jean Toomer
Langston Hughes
John Crowe Ransom
Archibald MacLeish
Marianne Moore
Arna Bontemps
Countee Cullen
Claude McKay
E. E. Cummings
Wallace Stevens
Robert Frost
Arthur Miller
Sherwood Anderson
Sinclair Lewis
Ernest Hemingway
Richard Wright
Zora Neale Hurston
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Willa Cather
Dorothy Parker
Zane Grey
Richard Connell
Susan Glaspell
Elwyn Brooks White
Chapter 8 Mideentury Voices
W. H. Auden
Theodore Roethke
Robert Lowell
Kenneth Fearing
Elizabeth Bishop
Randall Jarrell
Margaret Walker
Gwendolyn Brooks
Reed Whittemore
Richard Wilbur
Sylvia Plath
Anne Sexton
John Steinbeck
Thomas Wolfe
Eudora Welty
William Faulkner
Jack Kerouac
Eugene O' Neill
Chapter 9 In Our Time
John F. Kennedy
Robert Hayden
Rita Dove
Sherman Alexie
Frank McCourt
Adrienne Rich
Toni Morrison
Richard Matheson
Ray Bradbury
Amy Tan
John Updike
Ralph Ellison
Saul Bellow
Flannery O' Connor
Julia Alvarez
Susan Shown Harjo
Joy Harjo