Selected by acclaimed author Joyce Carol Oates, a remarkable anthology of fifty-five outstanding essays on a variety of topics features contributions by F. Scott Fitzgerald, W. E. B. DuBois, James Baldwin, Eudora Welty, Stephen Jay Gould, John Updike, Saul Bellow, Joan Didion, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, John McPhee, Rachel Carson, and other notable twentieth-century literary masters. Reprint.