James Hart's Oxford Companion to American Literature is a classic, which, in its 45-year lifetime, has offered a matchless guided tour through American literary culture, past and present, popular and polite. Reviewing the Fifth Edition (1983) in The New York Times Book Review, Alfred Kazin called it "a reference work I have never been able to live without...excellently resourceful." Hart now gives us the first abridgement of the Companion, making...