The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 1 (Shorter Eighth Edition)

I'm a little biased about this anthology because I did a project involving its editor, Nina Baym, AND the class that this book was for was led by one of my favorite, most laid-back professors.I like this book. It's got some heavy truth bombs it's ready to drop on you whenever you decide to open it, read it, and take it for what it is, which is awesome. It'll open your eyes, bore you to death, and make you want to see if knowledge can be absorbed via osmosis if you sleep with this open on your face (though I can already tell you, it can't), but this book--I promise, it's worth breaking open and at least skimming. Give yourself the opportunity to draw your own conclusions about the history in older American literature outside of class. It's only fair to YOU for you to try.Anyway, I'd rent this whether or not it were required for class. It's pretty frickin' interesting when you give it a chance.

I can’t say I enjoyed reading this for class but it’s what I needed.

Other than a thorough and informative collection of literature, this book can double as a spacer for a low computer screen, it works well as a door stop, and if your roommate makes you quite vexed you can read him some very boring literature and then hit him over the head with it.

While some of the stories in this anthology were good, I didn't find this as enjoyable overall as some of the other anthologies I've purchased. I'm not the biggest fan of colonial American literature so that's a big part of why it didn't do much for me. However, there's still a few gems in this. Worth purchasing!

Great shape but I’m currently failing the class and a lot of these readings are boring.

While this is much easier to carry than the previous edition that had 2 separate books, some of the passages have been shortened to a point that they lose a lot of their context/meaning/moral. Uncle Tom's Cabin for example loses a lot about how and why Eliza decides to run away to begin with.

Was only half the textbook. Now I need to order the second half!

The book came in on time and satisfied most of the texts we needed for class. Overall, good service, glad the semester is over.