A selection of early American essays, sermons, poems, captivity narratives, letters, accounts, and travels from the early settlement to the beginning of the 19th century. There are six main headings "The American Dream," "Religious Traditions," "The Indians and the Frontier," "Nature in the New World," "Slavery and the Black," and "The American Revolution". Each heading has several chapters. The book contains writings of John Smith, John Winthrop, William Bradford, Anne Bradstreet, Benjamin Franklin, Philip Freneau, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, Phyllis Wheatley, William Byrd, John Woolman, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, George Washington, and many others.