America is a nation making itself up as it goes along--a story of discovery and invention unfolding in speeches and images, letters and poetry, unprecedented feats of scholarship and imagination. In these myriad, multiform, endlessly changing expressions of the American experience, the authors and editors of this volume find a new American history. In more than two hundred original essays, this book brings together the nation's many voices. From the first conception of a New World in the sixteenth century to the latest re-envisioning of that world in cartoons, television, science fiction, and hip hop, the book gives us a new, kaleidoscopic view of what "Made in America" means. Literature, music, film, art, history, science, philosophy, political rhetoric--cultural creations of every kind appear in relation to each other, and to the time and place that give them shape.--From publisher description.

1507, the name "America" appears on a map / Toby Lester -- 1521 Mexico in America / Kirsten Silva Gruesz -- 1536, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca / Ilan Stavans -- 1585, "Counterfeited according to the truth" / Michael Gaudio -- 1607, Fear and love in the Virginia colony / Adam Goodheart -- 1630, A city upon a hill / Elizabeth Winthrop -- A nearer neighbor to the Indians / Ted Widmer -- 1666, Anne Bradstreet / Wai Chee Dimock -- 1670, The American jeremiad / Emory Elliott ; The stamp of God's image / Jason D. LaFountain -- 1673, The Jesuit relations / Laurent Dubois -- 1683, Francis Daniel Pastorius / Alfred L. Brophy -- 1692, The Salem witchcraft trials / Susan Castillo -- 1693, Edward Taylor / Werner Sollors -- 1700, Samuel Sewall's "The selling of Joseph" / David Blight -- 1722, Benjamin Franklin, the Silence Dogood letters / Joyce E. Chaplin -- 1740, The Great Awakening / Joanne Van Der Woude -- Late 1740s, Two national anthems / John Picker -- 1765, Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur / Leo Damrosch -- 1773, Phillis Wheatley / Rafia Zafar -- 1776, The Declaration of Independence / Frank Kelleter -- 1784, Charles Willson Peale / Michael Leja -- 1787, James Madison's "Notes of the debates in the federal convention" / Mitchell Meltzer -- 1787-90, John Adams's "Discourses on Davila" / John Diggins -- 1791, Philip Freneau and "The National Gazette" / Jeffrey L. Pasley -- 1796, Washington's farewell address / Francois Furstenberg -- 1798, Mary Rowlandson and the Alien and Sedition Acts / Nancy Armstrong -- 1798, American Gothic / Marc Amfreville. 1801, Jefferson's first inaugural address / Jan Ellis Lewis -- 1804, The matter of Haiti / Kaima Glover -- 1809, Cupola of the world / Judith Richardson -- 1819, The Missouri crisis / John Stauffer -- 1820, Landscape with birds / Christoph Irmscher -- 1821, Sequoyah, the Cherokee syllabary / Lisa Brooks ; Junius Brutus Booth / Coppelia Kahn -- 1822, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, the Ojibwe firefly, and Longfellow's "Hiawatha" / Davie Treuer -- 1852, Thomas Cole and the Hudson River School / Alan Wallach -- 1826, Songs of the republic / Steve Erickson -- Cooper's Leatherstocking tales / Richard Hutson -- 1826-1927 Transnational poetry / Stephen Burt -- 1827, Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon / Terryl L. Givens -- 1828, David Walker's "Appeal, in four articles" / Tommie Shelby -- 1830, Jump Jim Crow / W.T. Lhamon, Jr. -- 1831, The "Cherokee Nation" decision / Philip Deloria -- 1832, President Jackson's bank veto / Dan Feller -- 1835, "Democracy in America" / Ted Widmer ; William Gilmore Simms's "The Yemassee" / Jeffrey Johnson ; "The Sacred harp" / Sean Wilentz -- 1836, The Alamo and Texas border writing / Norma E. Cantu ; Richard Henry Dana, Jr. / Kirsten Silva Gruesz -- 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson's "The American Schollar" / James Conant -- 1838, "The Divinity School Address / Herwig Friedl ; The slave narrative / Caille Millner -- 1841, "The murders in the Rue Morgue" / Robert Clark -- 1846, James Russell Lowell's "Biglow papers" / Shelley Streeby ; Henry David Thoreau / Jonathan Arac. 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville / Clark Blaise -- 1851, "Moby-Dick" / Greil Marcus ; "Uncle Tom's Cabin" / Beverly Lowry -- 1852, Hawthorne's "Blithedale romance" and utopian communities / Winifried Fluck ; Frederick Douglass's "What to the slave is the Fourth of July?" / Liam Kennedy -- 1854, Maria Cummins and sentimental fiction / Cindy Weinstein -- 1855, Walt Whitman's "Leaves of grass" / Angus Fletcher -- 1858, The Lincoln-Douglas debates / Michael T. Gilmore -- 1859, The science of the Indian / Scott Richard Lyons -- 1861, Emily Dickinson / Susan Stewart -- 1862, The journeys of "Little women" / Shirley Samuels -- 1865, Lincoln's 2nd inaugural address / Ted Widmer ; "Conditions of repose" / Robin Kelsey -- 1869, Carl Schurz / Michael Boyden -- 1872, All men and women are created equal / Laura Wexler -- 1875, The Winchester rifle / Merritt Roe Smith -- 1876, Melville in the dark / Kenneth W. Warren ; The art of telephony / Avital Ronell -- 1878, "How to make our ideas clear" / Christopher Hoodway -- 1879, John Muir and nature writing / Scott Slovic -- 1881, Henry James's "Portait of a Lady" / Alide Cagidemetrio -- 1884, Mark Twain's hairball / Ishmael Reed ; The linotype machine / Lisa Gitelman ; The Southwest imagined / Leah Dilworth -- 1885, The problem of error / James Conant ; Limits to violence / James Dawes ; Writing New Orleans / Andrei Codrescu -- 1888, The introduction of motion pictures / Jonathan Lethem -- 1889, "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court / Yael Schacher -- 1893, Chief Simon Pokagon and Native American literatuer / David Treuer -- 1895 / Ida B. Wells's "A Red Record" / Jacqueline Goldsby -- 1896, Paul Laurence Dunbar's "Lyrics of lowly life" / Judith Jackson Fossett ; Queen Lili'uokalani / Rob Wilson -- 1897, The Robert Gould Shaw and 54th Regiment Monument / Richard Powers -- 1898, Literature and imperialism / Amy Kaplan -- 1899, "McTeague" and 1924, "Greed" / Gilberto Perez. 1900, Henry Adams / T.J. Jackson Lears ; "The Wizard of Oz" / Gerald Early ; 1900, "Sister Carrie" and 1905, "The House of Mirth" / Farah Jasmine Griffin -- 1901 & 1903, The problem of the color line / Arnold Rampersad -- 1903, "The real American has not yet arrived" / Aviva Taubenfeld ; The invention of the blues / Luc Sante ; One sees what one sees / Daniel Albright -- 1904, Henry James in America / Ross Posnock -- 1905, "Little Nemo in Slumberland" / Kerry Roeder ; 1906, The Azusa Street revival / RJ Smith ; The San Francisco Earthquake / Kathleen Moran -- "Alexander's Ragtime Band" / Philip Furia -- 1912, Lifeboats cut adrift / Alan Ackerman ; The lure of impossible things / Heather Love ; Tarzan begins his reign / Gerald Early -- 1913, A modernist moment / Bonnie Costello -- 1915, D.W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" / Richard Schickel ; Robert Frost / Christian Wiman -- 1917, The philosopher and the millionaire / Richard J. Bernstein -- 1920, Mamie Smith's "Crazy Blues" / Daphne A. Brooks -- 1921, Jean Toomer / Elizabeth Alexander -- 1922, T.S. Eliot and D.H. Lawrence / Anita Patterson -- 1923, Chaplinesque / David Thomson -- 1942, F.O. Mattiessen meets Russell Cheney / Robert Polito ; The Johnson-Reed Act and ethnic literature / Yael Schacher -- 1925, "The Great Gatsby" / Lan Tran ; Sinclair Lewis / Jeffrey Ferguson ; The Scopes trial / Michael Kazin ; Dorothy Parker / Catherine Keyser -- 1926, "Fire!" / Carla Kaplan ; Hardboiled / Walter Mosley ; The Book-of-the-Month Club / Joan Shelly Rubin -- 1927, Carl Sandburg and "The American Songbag" / Paul Muldoon ; "Free to develop their faculties" / Jeffrey Rosen -- 1928, Dilsey Gibson goes to church / Werner Sollors ; John Dos Passos / Phoebe Kosman ; The mouse that whistled / Karal Ann Marling -- 1930, "The Silent Enemy" / Micah Treuer ; Grant Wood's "American Gothic" / Sarah Vowell -- 1931, Nevada legalizes gambling / David Thomson -- 1932, Edmund Wilson's "The American jitters" / Anthony Grafton ; Arthur Mill / Andrea Most -- 1932, The River Rouge plant and industrial beauby / John M. Staudenmaiser, S.J. ; Ned Cobb / Robert Cantwell -- 1933, "Baby Face" is censored / Stephanie Zacharek ; FDR's first Fireside Chat / Paula Rabinowitz -- 1934, Robert Penn Warren / Howell Raines -- 1935, The Popular Front / Angela Miller ; The skyscraper / Sarah Whiting ; Alcoholics Anonymous / Michael Tolkin ; "Porgy and Bess" / John Rockwell -- 1936, "Gone with the Wind" and "Absalom, Absalom!" / Carolyn Porter ; Two days in Harlem / Adam Bradley ; "Life" begins / Michael Lesy -- 1938, Superman / Douglas Wolk ; Jelly Roll Morton speaks / Marybeth Hamilton -- 1939, Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" / Robert O'Meally ; Up from invisibility / Josef Jarab -- 1940, "No way like the American way" / Erika Doss -- 1940-44, Preston Sturges / Douglas McGrath -- 1941, An insolent style / Carrie Tirado Bramen ; "Citizen Kane" / Joseph McBride ; The word "multicultural" / Werner Sollors -- 1943, Hemmingway's paradise, Hemingway's prose / Keith Taylor -- 1944, The 2nd Bill of Rights / Cass R. Sunstein -- 1945, Bebop / Ingrid Monson ; Thomas Pynchon and modern war / Glenda Carpio ; The atom bomb / Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi -- 1946, Integrating the military / Gerald Early -- 1947, Tennessee Williams / Camille Paglia -- 1948, Norbert Wiener's "Cybernetics" / David A. Mindell ; Saul Bellow / Ruth Wisse -- 1949-50, "The birth of cool" / Ted Gioia. 1950, "Damned busy painting" / T.J. Clark -- 1951, A poet among painters / Mark Ford ; "The Catcher in the Rye" / Gish Jen ; James Jones's "From Here to Eternity" / Lindsay Waters ; A soft voice / M. Lynn Weiss -- 1952, Elia Kazan and the blacklist in Hollywood / Michael Ventura ; C.L.R. James / Donald E. Pease -- 1953, The song in country music / Dave Hickey -- 1954, Wallace Stevens's "Collected poems" / Helen Vendler -- 1955, "The self-respect of my people" / Monica L. Miller ; A.J. Liebling and the Marciano-Moore fight / Carlo Rotella ; A generation in miniature / Richard Candida Smith ; Nabokov's "Lolita" / Stephen Schiff -- 1956, "Roll Over Beethoven" / James Miller -- 1957, Dr. Seuss / Philip Nel -- 1959, "Nobody's perfect" / William J. Mann -- 1960, "Psycho" / William Beard ; More than a game / Michael MacCambridge -- 1961, JFK's inaugural address and "Catch-22" / Charles Taylor ; The author as advertisement / David Thomson -- 1962, Bob Dylan writes "Song to Woody" / Joshua Clover ; "White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art" / Howard Hampton -- 1963, "Letter from Birmingham Jail" / George Hutchinson -- 1964, Robert Lowell's "For the Union Dead" / Peter Sacks ; "The last stand on earth" / Gary Kamiya -- 1965, The Council on Interracial Books for Children / Dianne Johnson ; "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" / David Bradley -- 1968, Norman Mailer / Mary Gaitskill ; The illusory babels of language / Hal Foster ; The plight of conservative literature / Michael Kimmage -- 1969, Eilzabeth Bishop's "Complete poems" / Laura Quinney ; The first Asian Americans / Hua Hsu ; The eye of Vietnam / Thi Phuong-Lan Bui -- 1970, Maya Angelou, Toni MOrrison, Alice Walker / Cheryl A. Wall ; Linda Lovelace / Anne Marlowe -- 1973, Loisaida literature / Frances R. Aparicio ; Adrienne Rich's "Diving into the Wreck" / Maureen N. McLane -- 1975, Gayl Jones / Robert O'Meally -- 1981, Toni Morrison / Farah Jasmine Griffin -- 1982, Edmund White's "A Boy's Own Story" / Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum ; "Wild Style" / Mua Hsu ; Maya Lin's wall / Anne M. Wagner ; Harriet Wilson / Saidiya V. Hartman -- 1985, Henry Roth / Mario Materassi -- 1987, Maxine Hong Kingston's "Tripmaster Monkey" / Seio Young Chu -- 1995, Philip Roth / Hana Wirth-Nesher -- 2001, 21st-century free verse / Stephen Burt -- 2003, Richard Powers's "The Time of Our Singing" / Greil Marcus -- 2005, Hurricane Katrina / Greil Marcus & Werner Sollors -- 2008, Barack O'Bama / Kara Walker.