Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Editor's Introduction -- Book One: The Promised Land -- John Filson, With Joy and Wonder -- Felix Walker, A New Sky and Strange Earth -- Gilbert Imlay, This Delectable Region -- Bernard Mayo, Goshen of the Western World -- Grant C. Knight, God's Very Footstool -- Anthony Trollope, A Very Pretty Place -- Charles Dudley Warner, An Orthodox and a Moral Region -- J. Soule Smith, Near to Heaven -- Ulric Bell, That Particular "It" -- Book Two: The Land and its Heroes -- James Lane Allen, Bluegrass Kentuckians -- John Bradford, A Most Singular Circumstance -- John A. McClung, After Anxious Reflection -- Theodore Roosevelt, The Covenanting Spirit -- Daniel Drake, I Well Recollect -- John Robert Shaw, Bottle Fever -- Noah M. Ludlow, Actors Were Funny People -- Horace Holley, Nothing for Profit -- Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Appearance of a Gentleman -- Basil Duke, The Bearing of a Soldier -- James Lane Allen, Belated, Fruitless Efflorescence -- George B. Leach, Something Never Forgotten -- Clement Eaton, This Appreciation of Leisure -- Joe H. Palmer, The Finger of Providence -- Book Three: A Joy to Man -- Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Buckskin Petticoat -- James T. Flexner, A Heroic Choice -- Jefferson J. Polk, Love Entered into Me -- Cassius Marcellus Clay, A Moment of Supreme Bliss -- J. Winston Coleman, Jr., Emergency -- Thomas D. Clark, Belle of the Elkhorn -- Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Morning Star -- Irvin S. Cobb, Unreconstructed Rebel -- Book Four: The Sports of Gentlemen -- William Littell, Too Much Spirit -- Henry Clay, A Genuine American Policy -- Thomas N. Allen, The 4th of July -- Anonymous, Left-Hand Doin's -- A. B. Guthrie, Jr., Sonny Boy -- Patrick O'Donovan, Let the Folks See You -- James Lane Allen, County Court Day -- William H. Townsend, The Sale of Eliza -- Anonymous, The Mystery of Quarter-Racing.

Anonymous, The Fastest Time Made -- Basil Duke, The Art of "Horse-Pressing" -- John James Audubon, The Management of the Rifle -- George Dennison Prentice, A Trial of Strength -- Thomas D. Clark, The Sign of the Cockpit -- J. Soule Smith, Zenith of Man's Pleasure -- Henry Watterson, The Bottom of the Glass -- Thomas D. Clark, An Air of Mystery -- Allan Trout, Abundant Life -- Joe H. Palmer, Jelly on Her Biscuit -- Book Five: The Treadmill of Life -- James B. Finley, Awful beyond Description -- William Burke, Shouts of Triumph -- Richard McNemar, Perfect Harmony -- William Littell, The Said Distemper -- Richard Carter, Morning, Noon, and Night -- C. W. Short, That Awful Scourge -- Robert Penn Warren, Lie for Lie -- Calvin Colton, Prisoner on This Blessed Day -- Joseph Hergesheimer, The Right Age for Neutrality -- John Fox, Jr., The Low Sound of Sobbing -- Henry Watterson, These Noble Sentiments -- Hughes, Schaefer, Williams, Awful Deed of Wrath -- Joe Jordan, The Folly of a Few -- Henry Watterson, To Hell.