COVER -- TITLE -- COPYRIGHT -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- PART 1 THE PERSONAL -- Here's Mine -- Richard Elman -- Grace Paley -- My Rap Problems - and Yours? -- Arming Yourself for the Outdoors -- Two Midwest Meditations -- Dear Dad -- Confessions of a Guilty Freelancer -- PART 2 THE PERSONAL AND THE POLITICAL -- Extreme Makeover: TV Home Improvement from Carter to Bush II -- Five Male Chroniclers of Bill Clinton and His World: Christopher Hitchens, Michael Isikoff, Andrew Morton, George Stephanopoulos, Bob Woodward -- 9/11: What We Saw -- Blue & Red America Post September 11th -- Virginia Tech -- Imus -- Susan Braudy: Family Circle -- Joe Conason: Big Lies -- Daniel Ellsberg: Secrets -- John Frohnmayer: Leaving Town Alive -- Dick Morris: Off With Their Heads -- Kevin Phillips: American Dynasty (1) -- Kevin Phillips: American Theocracy (2) -- Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose: Bushwacked -- Robert B. Reich: Reason -- David McCullough: John Adams -- Edmund Morris: Theodore Rex -- Steve Neal: Happy Days Are Here Again -- Amanda Smith: Hostage to Fortune: The Letters of Joseph P. Kennedy -- John A. Farrell: Tip O'Neill and the Democratic Century -- PART 3 THE PERSONAL AND THE POLITICAL AND THE LITERARY -- Raymond Carver: Hemingway Without Money -- Michael Ryan: Secret Life -- Philip Graham: How to Read an Unwritten Language -- Tim O'Brien: In the Lake of the Woods -- Peter Dexter: The Paperboy -- John Updike: The Afterlife and Other Stories -- John McGahern and Colm Toíbín: Collected Stories, The Heather Blazing -- Jim Crace: Signals of Distress -- Robert Olen Butler: They Whisper -- Richard Ford: Independence Day -- Harvey Jacobs: American Goliath -- Thomas Keneally: American Scoundrel -- John L'Heureux: The Miracle -- Toby Olson and Ellen Akins: At Sea, Public Life -- Pinckney Benedict: Dogs of God -- Rick Bass: Platte River.

Michael Stephens: The Brooklyn Book of the Dead -- Graham Swift: Last Orders -- Bob Shacochis: Swimming in the Volcano -- Willie Morris: New York Days -- Forward to the Past: SLF Album -- Andrew Levy: The Culture and Commerce of the American Short Story -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INDEX -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y.