History | | Literature |
Leif Ericsson establishes first European settlement in North America | A.D. 1001 | |
Pueblo at Mesa Verde, Colorado | c. 1073 | |
Rise of the Aztec empire | c. 1300 | |
Mound Builders in Mississippi and Ohio River valleys | c. 1400 | |
Columbus arrives in the Bahamas | 1492 | |
Tenochtitlán surrenders to Cortés | 1521 | |
Verrazzano explores the eastern coast of the present-day United States | 1524 | Giovanni Da Verrazzano Verrazano's Voyage |
Cabeza de Vaca's travels from Florida to Mexico | 1528–1536 | |
| 1542 | Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca |
Spanish settlement at St. Augustine | 1565 | |
Sir Francis Drake claims central California coast for Elizabeth I | 1579 | |
Champlain explores the New England coast | 1604–1607 | |
The English settle Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the New World | 1607 | |
Henry Hudson discovers the Hudson River and Hudson Bay | 1609–1610 | |
| 1613 | Samuel de Champlain The Voyages of 1604–1607 |
The first step toward slavery in the future United States occurs when twenty Africans arrive in Jamestown | 1619 | |
The Pilgrims (Puritan Separatists) establish a settlement in Plymouth on the coast of present-day southeastern Massachusetts | 1620 | |
Dutch settle Manhattan | 1624 | John Smith The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles |
Massachusetts Bay Colony founded by non-Separatist Puritans | 1630 | William Bradford Of Plymouth Plantation, Book I
John Winthrop A Model of Christian Charity |
Harvard College founded | 1636 | |
| 1637 | Thomas Morton New English Canaan |
First printing press established at Massachusetts Bay | 1638 | |
Sugar boom in Caribbean leads to increased importation of slaves | 1640s | |
| 1640 | The Bay Psalm Book |
The English Civil War begins | 1642 | |
| 1644 | Roger Williams The Bloody Tenet of Persecution for Cause of Conscience |
| 1650 | Anne Bradstreet The Tenth Muse |
First Quakers arrive in Massachusetts | 1656 | |
| 1662 | Michael Wigglesworth The Day of Doom |
| 1673 | Samuel Sewall The Diary of Samuel Sewall (Customs, Courts, and Courtships) |
King Philip's War erupts between New Englanders and an alliance of Indian tribes led by Metacomet | 1675 | |
| 1682 | Mary Rowlandson A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
Edward Taylor
"The Preface"; "Upon Wedlock, and Death of Children" |
French Calvinists or Huguenots escape persecution in France and settle in the English colonies in America | 1685 | |
Salem witch trials begin | 1692 | |
| 1693 | Cotton Mather
>The Wonders of the Invisible World |
| 1704–1705 | Sarah Kemble Knight The Journal of Madam Knight |
England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales unite as Great Britain | 1707 | |
George I assumes the throne of England after the death of Queen Anne | 1714 | |
Cotton Mather starts smallpox inoculations | 1720 | |
George II begins his reign, which extends until 1760 | 1727 | |
| 1728 | William Byrd The History of the Dividing Line |
The Great Awakening seizes America | 1730s–1740s | |
| 1741 | Jonathan Edwards Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God |
The French and Indian War | 1754–1763 | |
| 1756–1772 | John Woolman The Journal of John Woolman |
King George III ascends to throne of England | 1760 | |
Mason-Dixon line surveyed | 1763–1767 | |
The Stamp Act and Quartering Act further antagonize colonists; the Sons of Liberty, a resistance group, is formed | 1765 | |
British troops arrive in Boston | 1768 | |
Boston Massacre Founding of the first mission in California by Friar Junipero Serra | 1770 | |
| 1770–1775 | St. Jean de Crèvecoeur Letters from an American Farmer |
| 1771 | Benjamin Franklin begins The Autobiography |
The Boston Tea Party | 1773 | |
| 1773–1776 | Phillis Wheatley Poems on Various Subjects
John Adams and Abigail Adams Letters [Selections] |
Meeting of the First Continental Congress | 1774 | Logan Speech |
War for American Independence Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill fought | 1775–1781 | |
| 1776 | Thomas Paine Common Sense
Thomas Jefferson The Declaration of Independence |
French increase assistance and recognize American as a sovereign nation | 1778 | |
The British seize Charleston | 1780 | |
General Charles Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown and the war ends | 1781 | Philip Freneau
"To the Memory of the Brave Americans" |
The Treaty of Paris formally ends the American Revolution | 1783 | |
Shays's Rebellion in Massachusetts | 1786–1787 | |
The Constitutional Convention meets in Philadelphia and in May passes the Constitution | 1787 | Royall Tyler The Contrast
The Federalist The Federalist No. 1
Ben Franklin Speech in the Convention |
George Washington elected first president French Revolution begins | 1789 | Olaudah Equiano The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano |
| 1791 | William Bartram Travels through North and South Carolina |
Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin | 1793 | |
The Whiskey Rebellion occurs in western Pennsylvania | 1794 | Thomas Paine
The Age of Reason |
John Adams elected president | 1796 | Joel Barlow The Hasty-Pudding |
XYZ Affair Alien and Sedition acts passed | 1798 | |
The Second Great Awakening | Late 1790s | |
| 1799 | Charles Brockden Brown Edgar Huntly |
Thomas Jefferson elected president Library of Congress founded | 1800 | |
Louisiana Purchase | 1803 | |
| 1805 | Red Jacket Speech |
Lewis and Clark expedition explores the West | 1804–1806 | |
The United States declares war on Great Britain | 1812 | |
Creek War fought in the South | 1813–1814 | |
The British burn Washington, D.C. Francis Scott Key writer "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the British attack Baltimore | 1814 | |
Erie Canal constructed | 1817–1825 | |
| 1817 | William Cullen Bryant Thanatopsis |
Panic and depression | 1819 | |
Missouri Compromise | 1820 | Washington Irving The Sketchbook; Rip Van Winkle |
Mexico wins independence from Spain | 1821 | |
Monroe Doctrine | 1823 | James Fenimore Cooper The Pioneers |
John Quincy Adams elected president | 1824 | |
| 1826 | The Last of the Mohicans |
| 1827 | Catharine Maria Sedgwick Hope Leslie, or Early Times in the Massachusetts |
Andrew Jackson elected president | 1828 | |
| 1829 | Speckled Snake Speech |
Webster and Hayne debate | 1830 | Oliver Wendell Holmes Old Ironsides |
The Indian Removal Bill and the "Trail of Tears" | 1830–1838 | |
Nat Turner leads a slave rebellion | 1831 | |
Santa Anna establishes himself as dictator of Mexico | 1834 | |
The Seminole War | 1835–1842 | |
Texas declares independence from Mexico | 1836 | Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature |
Depression | 1837–1843 | |
| 1839 | Caroline Stansbury Kirkland A New Home—Who'll Follow? |
| 1840 | Edgar Allan Poe Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque |
| 1841 | Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Self-Reliance"
T. B. Thorpe
"The Big Bear of Arkansas" |
| 1842 | Edgar Allan Poe
"The Raven" |
Large-scale migration to Oregon | 1843 | John Greenleaf Whittier
" Massachusetts to Virginia" |
Samuel F. B. Morse sends the first telegraph message | 1844 | |
| 1845 | Margaret Fuller Woman in the Nineteenth Century
Frederick Douglass Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass |
Congress declares war on Mexico | 1846 | Nathaniel Hawthorne Mosses from an Old Manse |
The California Gold Rush begins when traces of gold are found on James Sutter's ranch Women's Rights Convention, Seneca Falls, N.Y. | 1848 | James Russell Lowell The Biglow Papers |
| 1849 | Henry David Thoreau Civil Disobedience
Francis Parkman The Oregon Trail |
Compromise of 1850 | 1850 | Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter |
| 1851 | Herman Melville Moby-Dick |
| 1852 | Harriet Beecher Stowe Uncle Tom's Cabin |
| 1853 | Herman Melville
"Bartleby the Scrivener" |
Kansas-Nebraska Act | 1854 | Henry David Thoreau Walden |
| 1855 | Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Song of the Hiawatha
Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass |
Dred Scott decision | 1857 | Fanny Fern
"Male Criticism of Ladies' Books" |
Lincoln-Douglass debates | 1858 | |
John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry
First successful oil well at Titusville , Pennsylvania | 1859 | |
Abraham Lincoln elected president
South Carolina secedes from the Union | 1860 | |
The Confederate States of America formed
Fort Sumter seized by Confederates
Confederates victorious at First Battle of Bull Run | 1861 | Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Rebecca Harding Davis
"Life in the Iron-Mills" |
Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation
Battle of Gettysburg fought | 1863 | Abraham Lincoln
Gettysburg Address |
General Sherman's march from Atlanta to the sea | 1864 | |
Lee surrenders to Grant at Appomattox
Lincoln assassinated
Freedmen's Bureau established | 1865 | James Russell Lowell
"Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration" |
Congress passes the Civil Rights Bill over Johnston 's veto
Ku Klux Klan organized | 1866 | |
Congressional reconstruction | 1867–1877 | |
| 1867 | Mark Twain
"The Notorious Jumping Frog" |
| 1868 | Louisa May Alcott Little Women |
Congress passes Fifteenth Amendment
Transcontinental railroad completed
Brooklyn Bridge begun | 1869 | Bret Harte
"The Outcasts of Poker Flat" |
Amnesty Act returns political rights to Confederate leaders | 1872 | |
The great buffalo slaughter | 1872–1874 | |
| 1874 | George Washington Cable
"Belles Demoiselles Plantation " |
Financial panic and depression | 1873–1877 | |
Battle of Little Big Horn
Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone | 1876 | |
Thomas Edison invents the phonograph | 1877 | Sidney Lanier
"The Symphony" |
Edison develops the incandescent light bulb | 1879 | Henry James Daisy Miller |
| 1880 | Joel Chandler Harris
"The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story"; "Mr. Rabbit Finds His Match at Last" |
Booker T. Washington founds Tuskegee Institute | 1881 | Henry James The Portrait of a Lady |
Chinese Exclusion Act
John D. Rockefeller founds Standard Oil | 1882 | |
The Civil Service or Pendleton Act passed | 1883 | Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins Life among the Piutes |
| 1884 | Mark Twain Adventures of Huckleberry Finn |
The world's first skyscraper built in Chicago | 1885 | William Dean Howells The Rise of Silas Lapham |
Statue of Liberty dedicated
Haymarket riots | 1886 | Sarah Orne Jewett
"A White Heron" |
Ghost Dance religion | 1888–1891 | |
| 1889 | Hamlin Garland
"Under the Lion's Paw" |
Sherman Anti-Trust Act
Wounded Knee massacre | 1890 | First volume of Emily Dickinson's poems published posthumously |
International copyright law passed | 1891 | William Dean Howells Criticism and Fiction
Ambrose Bierce
"The Boarded Window"
Mary E. Wilkinson Freeman
"The Revolt of 'Mother'" |
Ellis Island opens as receiving station for immigrants | 1892 | Charlotte Perkins Gilman
"The Yellow Wallpaper" |
Chicago World's Fair | 1893 | Stephen Crane Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
Henry James The Real Thing and Other Tales |
Plessy v. Ferguson upholds Jim Crow laws | 1896 | Edwin Arlington Robinson
"Luke Havergal" |
Boston opens the first subway in America | 1897 | Paul Laurence Dunbar
"We Wear the Mask" |
Spanish-American War begins after the sinking of the Maine | 1898 | Henry James The Turn of the Screw |
The Philippine War | 1898–1902 | |
| 1899 | Kate Chopin The Awakening
Charles W. Chesnutt
"The Passing of Grandison"
Frank Norris
"A Plea for Romantic Fiction"
Edith Wharton
"The Muse's Tragedy" |
Theodore Roosevelt becomes president | 1901 | |
The Wright brothers launch the first airplane at Kitty Hawk , North Carolina | 1903 | Henry James The Ambassadors |
| 1905 | Edith Wharton The House of Mirth |
Pure Food and Drug Act passed | 1906 | |
| 1907 | Henry Adams
"The Dynamo and the Virgin" |
| 1908 | Jack London
"To Build a Fire" |
Sigmund Freud lectures in America on his theories concerning the unconscious and harmful repressions | 1909 | Gertrude Stein
"The Gentle Lena "
Mary Austin
"The Fakir" |
NAACP founded | 1910 | |
Mexican Revolution | 1911 | |
Woodrow Wilson elected president | 1912 | |
First assembly line at Ford Motor Company
New York Armory Show of modern art | 1913 | |
World War I begins
Panama Canal opens | 1914 | Robert Frost North of Boston |
"Great Migration" of southern blacks to the North | 1914–1920 | |
German submarine sinks the Lusitania
Provincetown Players established | 1915 | Ezra Pound begins Cantos
Edgar Lee Masters
"Petit, the Poet"; "Elsa Wertman"
Robert Frost
"The Road Not Taken" |
President Wilson reelected president | 1916 | Carl Sandburg
"Fog"; "Monotone"; "Gone" |
U. S. enters World War I
Russian Revolution breaks out | 1917 | Susan Glaspell
"A Jury of Her Peers" |
On November 11, an armistice ends World War I
The Theater Guild established | 1918 | Theodore Dreiser
"The Second Choice" |
Race riot erupts in Chicago | 1919 | Sherwood Anderson Winesburg, Ohio
Wallace Stevens
"Anecdotes of the Jar";
"Ploughing on Sunday" |
Prohibition begins after the Eighteenth Amendment is ratified by every state but Connecticut and Rhode Island
The Nineteenth Amendment gives women the right to vote | 1920 | Edwin Arlington Robinson
"Firelight"; "The Mill";
"Mr. Flood's Party"
Robert Frost
"Fire and Ice"
Ezra Pound
"Hugh Selwyn Mauberley" |
Congress established a quota system by which annual immigration can be regulated and decreased | 1921 | Elinor Wylie
"Wild Peaches"; "Sanctuary";
"Prophecy"
Marianne Moore
"Poetry"
Langston Hughes
"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" |
| 1922 | T. S. Eliot The Waste Land
Eugene O'Neill The Hairy Ape
Claude McKay
" America "
James Weldon Johnson The Book of Negro Poetry |
Teapot Dome scandal | 1923 | Ellen Glasgow
" Jordan 's End"
Robert Frost
"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
Edna St. Vincent Millay
"What Lips My Lips Have Kissed"
Wallace Stevens
"Bantams in Pine-Woods"
William Carlos Williams
"The Red Wheelbarrow"
E. E. Cummings
" Buffalo Bill's"
Jean Toomer Cane |
Calvin Coolidge elected president in a landslide | 1924 | H. D. (Hilda Doolittle)
"Heliodora" |
The Scopes trial | 1925 | T. S. Eliot
"The Hollow Men"
Amy Lowell
"Meeting-House Hill"
Robinson Jeffers
"Roan Stallion"
Countee Cullen
"Heritage"
F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby
Ernest Hemingway
"Big Two-Hearted River " |
| 1926 | Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises
Archibald MacLeish
"Ars Poetica" |
First talking movie, The Jazz Singer
Charles Lindbergh flies the first successful solo transatlantic flight | 1927 | |
Stock market crashes | 1929 | William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury
Thomas Wolfe
"An Angel on the Porch"
Katherine Anne Porter
"The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" |
| 1930 | Allen Tate
"Ode to the Confederate Dead"
Hart Crane The Bridge
John Dos Passos The 42nd Parallel |
Scottsboro defendants arrested | 1931 | Edna St. Vincent Millay
"Love Is Not All: It Is Not Meat Nor Drink"
F. Scott Fitzgerald
" Babylon Revisited"
William Faulkner
"That Evening Sun" |
Franklin D. Roosevelt elected president in a landslide victory over Hoover | 1932 | Willa Cather
"Neighbour Rosicky" |
Prohibition repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment
First "New Deal" legislation | 1933 | |
| 1934 | William Carlos Williams
"This Is Just to Say" |
Roosevelt initiates second "New Deal" legislation
Social Security Act passed | 1935 | |
The Golden Gate Bridge opens | 1937 | John Dos Passos U.S.A.
Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God |
New Deal ends | 1938 | John Steinbeck
"The Chrysanthemums" |
Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact shocks the world
World War II begins | 1939 | |
Germany launches a blitzkrieg against the Low Countries and France | 1940 | Ernest Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls
Richard Wright Native Son
Woody Guthrie
"This Land Is Your Land" |
On December 7, Japan attacks Pearl Harbor; within days of Pearl Harbor, the United States is also at war with Germany and Italy | 1941 | Eudora Welty
"A Memory" |
Battle of Midway
Soviets defend Stalingrad
The internment of Japanese Americans | 1942 | William Faulkner Go Down, Moses |
Allied forces invade Sicily | 1943 | |
D-Day: Allies invade Normandy
Battle of the Bulge | 1944 | |
On April 12, Roosevelt dies
U.S. drops atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
United Nations found
Ho Chi Minh unifies Vietnam | 1945 | Richard Wright Black Boy
Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie |
| 1946 | Elizabeth Bishop The Fish |
Marshall Plan approved | 1947 | Ralph Ellison Invisible Man
Richard Wilbur The Beautiful Changes |
Truman elected president | 1948 | |
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is formed by the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg | 1949 | Arthur Miller Death of a Salesman |
The Korean War | 1950–1953 | |
McCarthyism | 1950–1954 | |
| 1951 | J. D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye |
Dwight D. Eisenhower elected president | 1952 | Ralph Ellison Invisible Man |
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed | 1953 | Isaac Bashevis Singer Gimpel the Fool |
Brown v. Board of Educationof Topeka, Kansas, outlaws segregation of schools | 1954 | |
Montgomery bus boycott | 1955 | Flannery O'Connor
"Good Country People" |
| 1956 | Allen Ginsberg Howl
John Ashbery
"Some Trees"; "The Painter" |
The Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the first satellite | 1957 | Jack Kerouac On the Road
Vladimir Nabokov Pnin
Denise Levertov
"The Third Dimension"
James Baldwin
"Sonny's Blues"
Frank O'Hara
"Why I Am Not a Painter" |
| 1958 | Vladimir Nabokov Lolita
Bernard Malamud
"The Mourners" |
Fidel Castro leads a rebellion to overthrow Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista | 1959 | Saul Bellow Henderson the Rain King
Robert Lowell Life Studies
James Merrill
"A Timepiece"
W. D. Snodgrass
"April Inventory"; Heart's Needle
Gary Snyder
"The Late Snow & Lumber Strike of the Summer of Fifty-Four"; "Riprap"
Philip Roth
"The Conversion of the Jews" |
John F. Kennedy elected president
First oral contraceptive | 1960 | Gwendolyn Brooks
"We Real Cool"
Robert Lowell
"For the Union Dead"
W. S. Merwin
"The Drunk in the Furnace"
Anne Sexton
"Her Kind"; "The Farmer's Wife"
Thomas Pynchon
"Entropy"
John Updike Rabbit, Run |
Peace Corps created
The Soviets erect the Berlin Wall
Alan Shepard becomes the first American launched into space | 1961 | Edward Albee The American Dream |
Cuban missile crisis | 1962 | Rachel Carson Silent Spring
William Stafford
"Before the Big Storm"
James Dickey
"The Lifeguard"
Robert Bly
"Driving toward the Lac Qui Parle River "; "Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter"; "Watering the Horse"
Sylvia Plath
"Daddy" |
President Kennedy assassinated | 1963 | Thomas Pynchon V.
Betty Friedan The Feminine Mystique
Martin Luther King, Jr.
"I Have a Dream"
Bob Dylan
"The Times They Are A-Changin'" |
Lyndon Johnson elected president in a landslide
Direct military participation in the Vietnam war begins | 1964 | Theodore Roethke
"The Far Field"; "The Pike"; "In a Dark Time"
John Cheever
"The Swimmer"
Amiri Baraka
"In Memory of Radio"; "An Agony, As Now." |
Voting Rights Act passed
First Vietnam war protests
Immigration and Naturalization Act paves the way for increased diversity
Medicare and Medicaid established | 1965 | Sylvia Plath Ariel
A. R. Ammons Corsons Inlet |
| 1966 | Robert Penn Warren
"Blow, West Wind" |
The Black Panthers Party of Oakland, California, calls on African Americans to arm themselves against police harassment | 1967 | |
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., assassinated
Senator Robert Kennedy assassinated
Riots at Democratic Convention in Chicago
Richard Nixon elected president | 1968 | John Barth
"Lost in the Funhouse" |
In July, American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become first to walk on the surface of the moon
The Woodstock Music Festival attracts 400,000 people to the largest rock concert ever organized | 1969 | John Berryman The Dream Songs |
Four student protestors at Kent State killed by the National Guard | 1970 | Joyce Carol Oates
"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" |
Voting age lowered to eighteen | 1971 | Jay Wright
"Preparing to Leave Home" |
The Vietnam peace treaty ends the war for American troops | 1973 | Adrienne Rich
"Diving into the Wreck"
Toni Morrison Sula
Alice Walker
"Everyday Use" |
Richard Nixon resigns | 1974 | |
Jimmy Carter elected president | 1976 | |
Carter pardons Vietnam war draft evaders | 1977 | Simon J. Ortiz
"Vision Shadows"
Anne Tyler
"Average Waves in Unprotected Waters"
Charles Simic
" Euclid Avenue " |
| 1978 | John Cheever The Stories of John Cheever
Tim O'Brien Going after Cacciato |
Iran hostage crisis begins | 1979 | John Updike
"Separating" |
Iran hostage rescue attempt fails
Ronald Reagan defeats President Carter for the presidency | 1980 | Sam Shepard True West
Joseph Brodsky Lullaby of Cape Cod |
Sandra Day O'Connor becomes the first woman justice of the United States Supreme Court
AIDS first reported in the United States | 1981 | Lorna Dee Cervantes
"Poem for the Young White Man Who Asked Me How I, an Intelligent, Well-Read Person, Could Believe in the War between Races" |
| 1982 | Alice Walker The Color Purple
Bobbie Ann Mason
" Shiloh " |
The Supreme Court declares anti-abortion laws unconstitutional | 1983 | Cathy Song
"Picture Bride"
Raymond Carver
"A Small, Good Thing" |
Democratic Party names Geraldine Ferraro as first female vice presidential candidate by a major party | 1984 | Nash Candelaria
"El Patrón"
Louise Erdrich
"The Red Convertible"
Saul Bellow
"A Silver Dish"
John Edgar Wideman Sent for You Yesterday |
Iran-Contra affair | 1986–1989 | |
| 1986 | Rita Dove
"Roast Possum"
Ann Beattie
"Janus" |
| 1987 | August Wilson Fences |
Vice President George Bush wins presidency | 1988 | Toni Morrison Beloved |
Chinese army crushes student rebellion in Beijing 's Tiananmen Square
Berlin Wall dismantled | 1989 | Amy Tan
"Half and Half"
Bharati Mukherjee
"The Management of Grief" |
Iraq invades Kuwait | 1990 | Jamaica Kincaid
"Mariah"
John Edgar Wideman Philadelphia Fire |
Persian Gulf war
Soviet Union collapses | 1991 | Isabel Allende
"And of Clay Are We Created"
Sandra Cisneros Woman Hollering Creek |
Los Angeles race riots
Bill Clinton elected president | 1992 | Mary Oliver
"Picking Blueberries, Austerlitz, New York, 1957" |
| 1994 | Don DeLillo
"The Angel Esmeralda" |
Bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building | 1995 | |
Bill Clinton reelected to the presidency | 1996 | |
House of Representatives votes to impeach President Clinton | 1998 | |
President Clinton is acquitted by the Senate | 1999 | Annie Proulx
"The Half-Skinned Steer"
Jhumpa Lahiri
"The Third and Final Continent" |
George W. Bush assumes the presidency after controversial election
World Trade Center in New York destroyed by terrorists | 2001 | |
War in Iraq begins | 2003 | Sherman Alexie
"What You Pawn I Will Redeem" |
George W. Bush elected to second term | 2004 | Edwidge Danticat The Dew Breaker |
| 2006 | Al Gore An Inconvenient Truth |
Al Gore and Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) win the Nobel Peace Prize | 2007 | Sherman Alexie The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian
Isabel Allende Inés of My Soul
Joyce Carol Oates The Gravedigger's Daughter |