Theodore Dreiser : Sister Carrie, Jennie Gerhardt, Twelve Men (Library of America)

A master of naturalism, Theodore Dreiser brought the American novel into the twentieth century. Fascinated by the city street, its parade of fashion and its threat of poverty and degradation, his journalistic eye lets us see as they were first seen the now familiar realities of modern living. "Sister Carrie" traces the fate of a small-town girl drawn into the brutal metropolitan worlds of Chicago and New York, and Sinclair Lewis called it "the first fresh air since Mark Twain and Whitman." "Jennie Gerhardt"'s vital but naive heroine emerges superior to the succession of men who exploit her. With honest emotion and respect for unvarnished truth, "Twelve Men" muses on the exemplary lives of ordinary men in search of lasting values with which to face the new century. Together, these three works exemplify the energy, originality, and genius of one of the great modern American writers.