In the American Grain

First published in 1925, In the American Grain is a daring and provocative investigation into the origins of American identity. In this hybrid work—at once fiction, history, and criticism—Williams reimagines figures linked to the nation’s past, from Columbus, Cortés, Montezuma, and Cotton Mather to Jacaqata, Aaron Burr, Edgar Allan Poe, and Lincoln to uncover the restless, contradictory impulses shaping America still today. In twenty-one kaleidoscopic essays written in different styles for each subject, Williams does not simply recall but responds creatively to the past so it may properly guide actions in the present. These admiring, caustic, and visionary portraits coalesce into a major contribution to ongoing debates over the proper ways of telling American history. With a a biographical timeline and a new introduction that situates the book within contemporary debates and explains its enduring significance.

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) is recognized as one of America’s great modernist writers, alongside T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle, and Hart Crane. As a prolific writer and life-long practicing physician, his works have been widely anthologized. For his contribution to American letters he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the Gold Medal for Poetry of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and other awards.

Ulrich Baer is University Professor at New York University and has received Guggenheim, Getty, and Humboldt fellowships. Among his other books, he has written new introductions to more than fifty classic books by such authors as Shelley, Austen, Conrad, Woolf, and Fitzgerald.