Christopher MacGowan is Professor of English at the College of William and Mary, USA. His numerous publications include work on William Carlos Williams, Denise Levertov, Sherwood Anderson, Ford Madox Ford, and Vladimir Nabokov.

• Acknowledgments. How to Use This Book.Chronology: Significant Dates and Events, 1900–2000.Introduction.Part 1 Historical Contexts.The American Scene, c.1900.Expatriates: 1920s and Beyond.Charting the Depression: The 1930s.Post-war Alienation, Experiment, and Alternatives.Multicultural America: Borders, Tradition, and Identity.Part 2 Major Writers.Henry James (1843–1916).Edith Wharton (1862–1937).Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945).Willa Cather (1873–1947).Gertrude Stein (1874–1946).Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951).Raymond Chandler (1888–1959).Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960).F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940).John Dos Passos (1896–1970).William Faulkner (1897–1962).Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961).Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977).Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938).John Steinbeck (1902–1968).Nathanael West (1903–1940).Richard Wright (1908–1960).William S. Burroughs (1914–1997).Saul Bellow (1915–2005).Norman Mailer (1923–2007).James Baldwin (1924–1987).John Barth (b.1930).Toni Morrison (b.1931).John Updike (1932–2009).Philip Roth (b.1933).Don DeLillo (b.1936).Thomas Pynchon (b.1937).Joyce Carol Oates (b.1938).Raymond Carver (1938–1988).Louise Erdrich (b.1954).Sherman Alexie (b.1966).Part 3 Key Texts.Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie (1900).Henry James, The Wings of the Dove (1902).Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth (1905).Willa Cather, My Antonia (1918).Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio (1919).Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (1922).F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925).Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time (1925).William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929).Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937).Djuna Barnes, Nightwood (1937).John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939).Richard Wright, Native Son (1940).J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951).Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood (1952).Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952).Jack Kerouac, On the Road (1957).Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1958).Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961).William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch (1962).Saul Bellow, Herzog (1964).Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966).Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint (1969).Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony (1977).Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982).Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street (1984).William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984).Don DeLillo, White Noise (1985).Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987).Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club (1989).Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses (1992).Part 4 Themes.Race and American Fiction.The American Short Story.Hollywood and American Fiction.Women and Twentieth-Century American Fiction.Guide to Further Reading.Index.