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Tables of Contents for The Best American Essays of the Century
Chapter/Section Title
Page #
Page Count
Foreword
x
Robert Atwan
Introduction
xvii
Joyce Carol Oates
Corn-pone Opinions
1
5
Mark Twain
Of the Coming of John
6
14
W.E.B. Du Bois
A Law of Acceleration
20
8
Henry Adams
Stickeen
28
17
John Muir
The Moral Equivalent of War
45
12
William James
The Handicapped
57
14
Randolph Bourne
Coatesville
71
4
John Jay Chapman
The Devil Baby at Hull-House
75
15
Jane Addams
Tradition and the Individual Talent
90
8
T. S. Eliot
Pamplona in July
98
9
Ernest Hemingway
The Hills of Zion
107
7
H. L. Mencken
How It Feels to Be Colored Me
114
4
Zora Neale Hurston
The Old Stone House
118
13
Edmund Wilson
What Are Master-pieces and Why Are There So Few of Them
131
8
Gertrude Stein
The Crack-Up
139
14
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Sex Ex Machina
153
6
James Thurber
The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch
159
12
Richard Wright
Knoxville: Summer of 1915
171
5
James Agee
The Figure a Poem Makes
176
3
Robert Frost
Once More to the Lake
179
7
E. B. White
Insert Flap ``A'' and Throw Away
186
4
S. J. Perelman
Bop
190
3
Langston Hughes
The Future Is Now
193
6
Katherine Anne Porter
Artists in Uniform
199
15
Mary Mccarthy
The Marginal World
214
6
Rachel Carson
Notes of a Native Son
220
19
James Baldwin
The Brown Wasps
239
7
Loren Eiseley
A Sweet Devouring
246
6
Eudora Welty
A Hundred Thousand Straightened Nails
252
11
Donald Hall
Letter from Birmingham Jail
263
17
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Putting Daddy On
280
8
Tom Wolfe
Notes on ``Camp''
288
15
Susan Sontag
Perfect Past
303
10
Vladimir Nabokov
The Way to Rainy Mountain
313
6
N. Scott Momaday
The Apotheosis of Martin Luther King
319
8
Elizabeth Hardwick
Illumination Rounds
327
15
Michael Herr
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
342
16
Maya Angelou
The Lives of a Cell
358
3
Lewis Thomas
The Search for Marvin Gardens
361
12
John Mcphee
The Doomed in Their Sinking
373
10
William H. Gass
No Name Woman
383
12
Maxine Hong Kingston
Looking for Zora
395
17
Alice Walker
Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying
412
9
Adrienne Rich
The White Album
421
26
Joan Didion
Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood
447
20
Richard Rodriguez
The Solace of Open Spaces
467
10
Gretel Ehrlich
Total Eclipse
477
13
Annie Dillard
A Drugstore in Winter
490
7
Cynthia Ozick
Okinawa: The Bloodiest Battle of All
497
10
William Manchester
Heaven and Nature
507
13
Edward Hoagland
The Creation Myths of Cooperstown
520
12
Stephen Jay Gould
Life with Daughters: Watching the Miss America Pageant
532
17
Gerald Early
The Disposable Rocket
549
4
John Updike
They All Just Went Away
553
11
Joyce Carol Oates
Graven Images
564
5
Saul Bellow
Biographical Notes
569
22
Appendix: Notable Twentieth-Century American Literary Nonfiction
591