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This article describes the works of author Jerome David Salinger. Many of the stories published in various magazines and journals--Colliers, Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, Story, Kansas Review, New Yorker--during the 1940s reflect the influence of Salinger's experiences in the U.S. Army during World War II. In 1951, he published The Catcher in the Rye, an extremely popular novel whose sixteen-year-old narrator, Holden Caulfield, has spoken to and for generations of teenagers ever since. Nine Stories is a collection of short stories, eight of which were originally published in the New Yorker. Characters in several stories have been broken psychologically by war experiences. The children tend to be extremely smart and oddly fragile. The tone is often cynical and the narrative stance is slightly withdrawn.

This article features author Thomas Berger. Berger is a highly accomplished and prolific writer who has earned a lasting place in American letters. His 1983 novel, The Feud, a stunningly unattractive picture of Middle America in the 1930s, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. In 1965, this novel, whose main character observes the Battle of the Little Bighorn from both the white man's and the Indian point of view, was awarded the Western Heritage Award and the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

This article profiles David Ignatow. He is a distinguished American poet and editor who has spent much of his life in New York, a city whose dark side informs much of his work. In 1948, he published his first volume of poetry, Poems. His often matter-of-fact comments on everyday life and his rhetorical style show the influence of William Carlos Williams, a mentor who praised and encouraged Ignatow. Among the other strong influences on his work, Ignatow lists the Bible, the great Russian writers, and the American poet Walt Whitman. The political and social poems reflect his lived experience: the Great Depression of the 1930s, World War II, the Vietnam War, the American lust for money, the violence and insanity of life in the U.S. The personal poems rely on felt experience.

This article features U.S. author Elwyn Brooks White. White's first two books were published in 1929, The Lady Is Cold, a collection of light poems, and the humorous Is Sex Necessary? Or Why You Feel the Way You Do. The enduring popularity of White's children's books, Stuart Little, Charlotte's Web and The Trumpet of the Swan is a tribute to his ability to empathize with children's emotions

This article features author Ann Beattie. Beattie established herself as an important observer of a cross section of American culture in her early short stories, many of which, beginning in 1974, originally appeared in the New Yorker. Her first novel, Chilly Scenes of Winter, and a collection of short stories, Distortions, were both published in 1976. The novels Falling in Place and Love Always show similar changes in Beattie's development of her characters.