Heading out: the literary and journalistic documentary tradition of social observation: the call to venture outside of what we know, and attend the stories of others. Featured: James Agee, George Orwell, and William Carlos Williams -- When strangers meet: meeting so-called ordinary American working class men and women: courage, challenge, kindness and complexity in everyday living. Featured: the old ones of New Mexico, Raymond Carver, Edward Hopper, Tillie Olsen, and Ruby Bridges -- A storytelling humanity: ways of seeing race and identity: viewing encounters through the eyes of others and finding grace. Featured: Ralph Ellison, Flannery O'Connor, Zora Neal Hurston -- Bringing it home: intellectuals and the religious search: finding meaning in the life given to us with stories as our guide. Featured: Dorothy Day, John Cheever, Walker Percy, Simone Weil, and a potato chip truck -- Boundaries and breakthroughs: finding simple clarity amidst moral, psychological and social complexity. Featured: Paul Gauguin, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, and George Eliot -- Afterword: a course's history -- A reading list for life: the syllabus from the Harvard course, "A literature of social reflection".