Kind of stumbled onto this one. My friend Thad was going through his textbooks to sell back at the end of the semester and I picked The American Tradition in Literature (12th edition) out of the box. With all my books in storage I needed something heavy to keep me going for a couple months and, at more than 2,000 pages, this one’s my baby.

I’m not much of a textbook person but the editors, George and Barbara Perkins really nailed some magic. Sixty pages of Walt Whitman, a whole Kate Chopin novel (The Awakening), F. Scott, Hemingway, Woody Guthrie. There’s Faulkner’s “Barn Burning,” Steinbeck’s great “The Chrysanthemums,” William Stafford, Nabokov, Flannery O’Conner, Norman Mailer, a ton of Mark Twain. It’s even got the uncut version of Raymond Carver’s staggering “A Small, Good Thing.” It’s a monumental collection. So much history and so much America. I imagine you can find a good used copy and, if you do, by all means buy this book. It’ll pay off.

BIO: Adam Gnade's (guh nah dee) work is released as a series of books and records that share characters and themes; the fiction writing continuing plot-lines left open by the self-described "talking songs" in an attempt to compile a vast, detailed, interconnected, personal history of contemporary American life. Check out recent writing here and songs here. Contact: adam@asthmatickitty.com