Seeing Ourselves: Great Stories of America's Past

Brief Description: Throughout American history, short story writers have entertained us by creating brief narratives - short takes, we might call them - of the people and places that have become our national heritage. Alan Cheuse, the writer whose voice is familiar to all who listen to NPR, has put together a new variety of anthology, one that starts as a collection of wonderful literature but, by means of Cheuse's selection and commentary, becomes a social history of our nation. Organized chronologically, the anthology has been edited so that each story contributes to building a picture of America from the earliest stories in the 19th century all the way to World War I. The Greatest Early American Short Stories: People and Places that Came Before Us features stories by Washington Irving, Louisa May Alcott, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather, and more. Jacket Description/Flap: Contents Introduction Washington Irving (1783-1859) "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1819) Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" (1832) "Young Goodman Brown" (1835) Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) "The Purloined Letter" (1844) "The Cask of Amontillado" (1846) Herman Melville (1819-1891) "Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street" (1853) "The Encantadas or Enchanted Isles" (1854) Herman Melville (1819-1891) "My Contraband" also called "The Brothers" (1863) Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) (1835-1910) "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (1865) Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) "The First Christmas of New England" (1876) Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) "A White Heron" (1886) Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" (1891) "The Devil's Dictionary" (1906) Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892) Kate Chopin (1850-1904) "The Story of an Hour" (1894) Stephen Crane (1871-1900) "A Mystery of Heroism" (1895) Henry James (1843-1916) "The Beast in the Jungle" (1903) Jack London (1876-1916) "To Build a Fire" (1902/1908) "Samuel" (1909) Willa Cather (1873-1947) "The Enchanted Bluff" (1909) Edith Wharton (1862-1937) "Bunner Sisters" (1916) Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) "Free" (1918) Brief Description: Cheuse, a writer and National Public Radio contributor, has put together an anthology that starts as a collection of wonderful literature, but, by means of the editors selection and commentary, becomes a social history of the nation.

Contributor Bio:  Cheuse, Alan Alan Cheuse Alan Cheuse has been reviewing books on All Things Considered since the 1980s. Formally trained as a literary scholar, Alan also writes fiction and novels and publishes short stories. He is the author of three novels, two collections of short fiction, and the memoir Fall out of Heaven. With Caroline Marshall, he has edited two volumes of short stories. Alan's short fiction has appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, The Antioch Review, Ploughshares, and Another Chicago Magazine. His most recent collection of his short fiction was published in September 1998 and his essay collection, Listening to the Page, appeared in 2001. Alan splits his time between the two coasts, spending nine months of the year in Washington, D. C., where he teaches writing at George Mason University. His summers are spent in Santa Cruz, Calif. teaching writing at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. Cheuse earned his Ph. D. in comparative literature with a focus on Latin American literature from Rutgers University in 1974. "The greatest challenge of this work [at NPR]," he says, "is to make each two-minute review as fresh and interesting as you can while trying to focus on the essence of the book itself."