《美国文学阅读与欣赏》在相关章节中对美国文学发展的各个历史时期的时代背景、哲学和文艺思潮、文学运动和主要作家做了较为详尽的介绍。对所选作家及其作品也做了具体的介绍。

　《美国文学阅读与欣赏》结合作者在美国文学课堂教学实践中得到的经验，对练习项目做了精心的设计，包括检查学生对文本阅读理解程度的题目，培养学生对文本进行鉴赏的适合课堂上进行小组讨论的题目，以及锻炼学生用书面表达对文学作品的意见的写作练习。

Chapter One Early American Literature
Jonathan Edwards
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
Benjamin Franklin
The Autobiography
Chapter Two American Romanticism and Transcendentalism
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature
Self-Reliance
Henry David Thoreau
Walden
Edgar Allan Poe
The Raven
Nathanlel Hawhome
The Ministers Black Veil
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A Psalm of Life
Herman Melville
Moby Dick
walt Whitman
When I Heard the Learnd Astronomer
Cavalry Crossing a Ford
Come Up from the Fields， Father
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
Emily Dickinson
Wild blights-Wild blights!
A Bird Came down the Walk
I Died for Beauty-But Was Scarce
Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Chapter Three American Realism and American Naturalism
Samuel Longhorne Clemens
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
Henry James
Daisy Miller
Edith Wharton
Ethan Frame
Stephen Crane
The Red Badge of Courage
Theodore Dreiser
Old Rogaum and His Theresa
Jack London
The Law of Life
Chapter Four American Modernism
Ezra Pound
In a Station of the Metro
Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken
Fire and Ice
Mending Wall
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Thomas Steams (T. S. ) Eliot
The Love Song of J. ALfred Prufrock
Sherwood Anderson
Sophistication， Concerning Helen White
Emest Hemingwoy
A Clean， Well-lighted Place
William Faulkner
A Rose for Emily
Eugene 0Neill
Desire under the Elms
Chapter Five Post-war American Literature
Soul Bellow
Looking for Mr. Green
Arthur Miller
Death of a Salesman
Jerome David Salinger
The Catcher in the Rye
Flannery OConnor
The Life You Save May Be Your Own
Allen Ginsberg
A Supermarket in California
Raymond Carver
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
Alice Walker
Everyday Use
Gish Jen
In the American Society
References