本书收录近年SSAT的回忆版真题，依照阅读的实际考查方向，《美国文学篇》包含9个专题:早期美国，理性与革命，本土背景，新英格兰文艺复兴，冲突与融合，区域与现实，新方向，世纪之声，我们的时代。这种细致的分类，可以更好地帮助考生理解阅读文章，开活眼界，陶冶情操，提升文化修养。另外，在每个专题下配以阅读练习和与真题难度想当的经典阅读文章，并附有参考答案（电子版）。

通过阅读本书，考生们在提升语言技能的同时，也可以学到历史上的一些思想和哲理精华。掌握一门语言，并不仅仅是张口蹦出几句流行语，或是见了外国人寒暄几句就可以了。一门语言象征着一个民族，也代表着这个民族看待与诠释世界的方式。毫无疑问，学习英语的真正目的是发掘与之相关的民族的历史文化。

Chapter 1  Early America                        

Christopher Columbus

John Smith

William Bradford                                       

John Winthrop                                           

Anne Bradstreet                                          

Edward Taylor                                           

Jonathan Edwards                                       

Chapter 2  Reason and Revolution           

Benjamin Franklin                                           

Patrick Henry                                                 

Thomas Jefferson                                       

Philip Freneau                                                

Thomas Paine                                                 

Jean de Crevecoeur                                          

Olaudah Equiano

Phillis Wheatley                                              

Francis Scott Key

Chapter 3  Native Grounds                          

Washington Irving                                           

James Fenimore Cooper                              

William Cullen Bryant                                    

Edgar Allan Poe

Chapter 4  New England Renaissance           

Ralph Waldo Emerson                                     

Henry David Thoreau

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Herman Melville                                             

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Oliver Wendell Holmes                                    

James Russell Lowell                                       

John Greenleaf Whittier                                   

Chapter 5  Conflict and Celebration

Frederick Douglass                                          

Mary Boykin Chesnut                                      

Robert E. Lee                                                 

Abraham Lincoln                                            

Chief Joseph                                                   

Walt Whitman                                                

Emily Dickinson                                             

Mark Twain                                                    

Jacob ARiis

Chapter 6  Regionalism and Realism             

Bret Harte                                                      

Sarah Orne Jewett                                           

Lyman Frank Baum

Kate Chopin                                                   

Hamlin Garland

O. Henry                                                        

Charlotte Perkins Gilman                            

Jack London                                                   

Sidney Lanier                                                 

Edwin Arlington Robinson                               

Paul Laurence Dunbar                                      

Stephen Crane                                                 

Helen Keller                                                   

Theodore Dreiser                                             

Henry James                                                  

Upton Sinclair

Chapter 7  New Directions                            

Ezra Pound                                                     

Amy Lowell                                                   

Thomas Stearns Eliot                                       

William Carlos Williams                                 

Hilda Doolittle                                                

Gertrude Stein                                                

Carl Sandburg                                                 

Edna St Vincent Millay                                   

Edgar Lee Masters                                          

Jean Toomer                                                  

Langston Hughes                                             

John Crowe Ransom                                        

Archibald MacLeish                                         

Marianne Moore                                             

Arna Bontemps                                               

Countee Cullen                                               

Claude McKay                                               

E. E. Cummings                                             

Wallace Stevens                                             

Robert Frost                                                   

Arthur Miller                                             

Sherwood Anderson                                        

Sinclair Lewis                                                 

Ernest Hemingway                                          

Richard Wright                                               

Zora Neale Hurston                                         

F. Scott Fitzgerald                                           

Willa Cather

Dorothy Parker                                               

Zane Grey                                                      

Richard Connell                                              

Susan Glaspell                                                

Elwyn Brooks White

Chapter 8  Midcentury Voices                      

WH Auden                                                     

Theodore Roethke                                           

Robert Lowell                                                 

Kenneth Fearing

Elizabeth Bishop                                             

Randall Jarrell                                                

Margaret Walker                                            

Gwendolyn Brooks                                          

Reed Whittemore

Richard Wilbur                                               

Sylvia Plath                                                    

Anne Sexton                                                   

John Steinbeck_                                              

Thomas Wolfe                                                

Eudora Welty                                                 

William Faulkner                                            

Jack Kerouac                                                  

Eugene O’ Neill                                         

Chapter 9  In Our Time                               

John F. Kennedy                                             

Robert Hayden                                                

Rita Dove                                                       

Sherman Alexie                                              

Frank McCourt                                               

Adrienne Rich                                                 

Toni Morrison                                                 

Richard Matheson                                            

Ray Bradbury                                                 

Amy Tan                                                               

John Updike                                                   

Ralph Ellison                                                  

Saul Bellow                                                    

Flannery O’ Connor                                        

Julia Alvarez                                                  

Susan Shown Harjo                                         

Joy Harjo