What is America's attitude toward beauty? Is it something valuable for itself alone? Or does it require some other more moral vrtue? Or is it merely something to be shown off? Or something to be disapproved of? Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth asks us to consider this question.

Is John Smith's account of his rescue by Pocahontas true? Does it mater?

The Calvinist preacher Jonathan Edwards describes his own discovery of he seetness of God.

Self-reliance doesn't mean selfishness as much as it means self-confidence.

W.E.B. Du Bois reflects on the threat to the soul of thiniking of the world in terms of dollars.

As her husband John Adams participates in the writing of the founding documents of the United States of America, Abigail Adams asks him to consider too the wrongs done to women and the rights they should have in the new United States.

Hester presented as the embodiment of the American antinomian spirit.

The value of state clleges and universities to America.

Writing in 1819, over two hundred years ago, Washington Irving uses the image of a rickety wooden buildiing to represent the United States of America. Why?

The beginning of social work and social reform in America.