A gallery of portraits. from Uncle Tom's cabin / Harriet Beecher Stowe -- from The Morgesons / Elizabeth Stoddard -- from The Bostonians / Henry James -- "Miniver Cheevy" / Edwin Arlington Robinson -- from Literary friends and acquaintance / William Dean Howells -- "The Cambridge ladies" / E.E. Cummings -- from The late George Apley / John P. Marquand -- from The last hurrah / Edwin O'Connor -- "Reunion" / John Cheever -- "Plumbing" / John Updike -- from Parson's mill / Timothy Lewontin.
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Dissident dreamers. Letter to his wife / John Winthrop -- from The rights of the British colonies asserted and proved / James Otis -- Letters / Abigail Adams and John Adams -- Letters concerning Brook farm / George Ripley, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Nathaniel Hawthorne -- Argument before the Supreme Court in the Amistad case / John Quincy Adams -- "The lady in the white dress, whom i helped into the omnibus" / Nathaniel Parker Willis -- Speech in the United States Senate / Daniel Webster -- from Three sermons / Theodore Parker -- "Battle-hymn of the Republic" / Julia Ward Howe -- Transcendental wild oats / Louisa May Alcott -- from What social classes owe to each other / William Graham Sumner -- "Natural law" / Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. -- Broadcast address / John F. Kennedy -- "The green fields of the mind / A. Bartlett Giamatti.
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Education. from New England's first fruits / Harvard College -- Dogood papers, No. 4 / Benjamin Franklin -- from Conversations with children / Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and A. Bronson Alcott -- from Christian nurture / Horace Bushnell -- from "Equality before the law" / Charles Sumner -- Inagural address / Charles W. Eliot -- "The function of a university" / John Jay Chapman -- "Sex education" / Dorothy Canfield Fisher -- Schoolmasters / Louis Auchincloss, John McPhee, and Geoffrey Wolff.
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God speaks to the rain. preface to God's determinations touching His elect / Edward Taylor -- from The Christian philosopher / Cotton Mather -- The spider letter / Jonathan Edwards -- "Forest hymn" / William Cullen Bryant -- from Nature / Ralph Waldo Emerson -- "Dialogue" / Margaret Fuller -- from Two years before the mast / Richard Henry Dana, Jr. -- from American notebooks / Nathaniel Hawthorne -- from The history of the Puritan commonwealth / Peter Oliver -- "Four trees upon a solitary acre" / Emily Dickinson -- from The Maine woods / Henry David Thoreau -- "The oldest inhabitant--the weather of New England" / Mark Twain -- "What pragmatism means" / William James -- "Out, out--" / Robert Frost -- "The snow man" / Wallace Stevens -- from The outermost house / Henry Beston -- "Mr. Edwards and the spider" / Robert Lowell -- "Another night in the ruins" / Galway Kinnell -- "Mayflies" / Richard Wilbur.
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Strangers in the Promised Land. Examination of Susanna Martin / Salem Court -- from Eulogy on King Philip / William Apess -- from My bondage and my freedom / Frederick Douglass -- "The Jewish cemetery at Newport" / Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -- from The Promised Land / Mary Antin -- from "The case of Sacco and Vanzetti" / Felix Frankfurter -- Journal letters / F.O. Matthiessen from Boston adventure / Jean Stafford -- "The lottery" / Shirley Jackson -- "For the Union dead" / Robert Lowell -- from The autobiography of Malcolm X / Malcolm X and Alex Haley -- "Her kind" / Anne Sexton -- from Death at an early age / Jonathan Kozol -- from Common ground / J. Anthony Lukas.
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The abiding sense of place. "Hamatreya" / Ralph Waldo Emerson -- "A white heron" / Sarah Orne Jewett -- from The American scene / Henry James -- "Maine speech" / E.B. White -- Letter to the Cape codder / Fred Allen -- "Scenic view" / Donald Hall.
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The examined self. from Christ the Fountain of life / John Cotton -- "Before the birth of one of her children" / Anne Bradstreet -- Personal narrative / Jonathan Edwards -- "I should have been too glad, I see" / Emily Dickinson -- from The education of Henry Adams / Henry Adams -- from Darkwater / W.E.B Du Bois -- "To earthward / Robert Frost -- "In the waiting room" / Elizabeth Bishop -- from the Richer, the poorer / Dorothy West.
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The founding idea. from A model of Christian charity / John Winthrop -- from A brief recognition of New England's errand into the wilderness / Samuel Danforth.