One of a handful of anthologies edited in the 1940s by Random House co-founder Bennett Cerf.

Contents:

• Introduction by Bennett Cerf
• A White Heron by Sarah Orne Jewett
• Mammon and the Archer by O. Henry
• The Sculptor's Funeral by Willa Cather
• The Heathen by Jack London
• Little Miss Marker by Damon Runyon
• A Caddy's Diary by Ring Lardner
• For They Know Not What They Do by Wilbur Daniel Steele
• Pigeons en Casserole by Bessie Breuer
• The Standard of Living by Dorothy Parker
• Clay-Shuttered Doors by Helen R. Hull
• The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber
• The Circus by Katherine Anne Porter
• That Evening Sun Go Down by William Faulkner
• The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber by Ernest Hemingway
• The King of the Cats by Stephen Vincent Benét
• The Raid by John Steinbeck
• Warm River by Erskine Caldwell
• Afternoon in the Jungle by Albert Maltz
• Almos' a Man by Richard Wright
• The Shepherd's Daughter by William Saroyan
• Livvie is Back by Eudora Welty
• Hook by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
• The Man in the Brooks Brothers Shirt by Mary McCarthy
• The Girls in Their Summer Dresses by Irwin Shaw