As the popularity of traditional period courses in American and English literature declines in favour of multi-cultural and multi-national clustering of works, a demand for anthologies grouping different texts in different categories is increasing. These collections will be used in courses focused specificially on the anthology contents, but it is more likely that they will be adopted as one of several texts in an American Studies programme. American popular literature is one subject area enjoying a strong revival in such programmes. This anthology will focus on major works, which will be included in their entirety or in extensive excerpts. Many of these titles exist in expensive individual editions or are not readily available. Gutjahr's selections will incude works that are not contained in American literature survey anthology texts.