Incorporating readings that represent new voices and styles in nonfiction that will appeal to contemporary readers, this classic composition reader continues to provide engaging, instructive models of the rhetorical modes. Fourteen new selections appear in this respected modes-based reader, continuing its tradition of offering high-quality, accessible readings, both classic and with a contemporary "edge" and style. The readings encourage students to take a stand on questions of culture, identity, and value in college communities, in the workplace, and in society. Thorough introductions to each rhetorical pattern, numerous exercises, and sample student essays throughout the book emphasize practical concrete writing strategies. A thematic table of contents and table of "Essay Pairs"which groups essays particularly well-suited for study and discussionmake this book versatile and convenient for instructors to adapt for their classes.

Table of Contents

* mark sections new to this edition.

 

1. Reading for Writer

 

2. Ways of Writing

            Discovering

            Planning

            Drafting

            Revising

 

3. Example

Andy Rooney, In and Of Ourselves We Trust

Brent Staples, Just Walk On By

** Jonah Lehrer, The Uses of Reason

Mary Karr, Dysfunctional Nation

 

Issues and Ideas: Identities

            Wil Haygood, Underground Dads

            Alan Buczynski, Iron Bonding

 

4. Classification

** Matt Carmichael, Get Radical, Get Some Rest

Michael Ventura, Don’t Even Think About It!

**Salman Akhtar, Remembering the Dead

 

Issues and Ideas: Images of Sound and Sight

            Alissa Quart, Cinema of the In-Crowd

            Brenda Peterson, Life Is a Musical

 

5. Comparison

Mark Twain, Two Ways of Seeing a River

Bruce Catton, Grant and Lee, A Study of Contrasts

Philip Lopate, A Nonsmoker with a Smoker

** Bill McKibben, Old Macdonald Had a Farmer’s Market

Alice Walker, Am I Blue?

 

Issues and Ideas: Gender Differences

           Nicholas Wade, Method and Madness: How Men and Women Think

           Catherine Seipp, Meet Today’s Dad

 

6. Analogy

Lan Samantha Chang, Like Robinson Crusoe

 

Issues and Ideas: Humans and Animals

            Tom Wolfe, O Rotten Gotham—Sliding Down into the Behavioral Sink

            Barbara Kingsolver, High Tide in Tucson

 

7. Process

Joe Buhler and Ron Graham, Give Juggling a Hand

** Jennifer Graham, How to Decorate a Dorm Room on a Budget

Sridhar Pappu, Deranged Marriage

** Ian Frazier, How to Operate the Shower Curtain

 

Issues and Ideas: Advertising and Appearances

           Jean E. Kilbourne, Beauty . . . And the Beast of Advertising

           Jessica Mitford, To Dispel Fears of Live Burial

 

8. Cause-Effect

Susan Perry and Jim Dawson, What’s Your Best Time of Day

Mary Roach, My Father the Geezer

William Severini Kowinski, Kids in the Mall: Growing Up Controlled

 

Issues and Ideas: Consuming

            Cullen Murphy, Hello Darkness

            ** Verlyn Klinkenborg, Our Vanishing Night

 

9. Definition

John Berendt, The Hoax

Dagoberto Gilb, Pride

** Anne Fadiman, Coffee

 

Issues and Ideas: Defining Values and Roles

           Carter, The Insufficiency of Honesty

           Veronica Chambers, Mother’s Day

           

10. Description

Gary Soto, The Jacket

George Simpson, The War Room at Bellevue 

Donna Tartt, A Garden Party

** Daniel Thomas Cook, Children of the Brand

 

Issues and Ideas: Place and Person

           Barry Lopez, A Passage of the Hands

E. B. White, Once More to the Lake

 

11. Narration

Martin Gansberg, 38 Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call the Police

Geoffrey Canada, Pain

** Pat Conroy, Chili Cheese Dogs, My Father, and Me

 

Issues and Ideas: Stories and Values

            George Orwell, A Hanging

            Wayne Worcester, Arms and the Man

           

12. Induction and Deduction

Nancy Friday, The Age of Beauty

 

Issues and Ideas: Digital Realities

            Maia Szalavitz, A Virtual Life

            J.C. Herz, Superhero Sushi

 

13. Argument

Issues and Ideas: Current Controversies

Christopher B. Daly, How the Lawyers Stole Winter

Stephanie Mills,  Could You Live with Less?

Anna Quindlen, The Drug That Pretends It Isn’t

** Andrew O’Hehir, The Myth of Media Violence

** Elizabeth Svoboda, “I Am Not a Puzzle, I Am a Person”

Barbara Lawrence, Four-Letter Words Can Hurt You

Sarah Min, Language Lessons

 

14. Further Readings

** Jason Kelly, The Great TV Debate

Margaret Atwood, Pornography

Leslie Marmon Silko, Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit

Martin Luther King, Jr.,  Letter from Birmingham Jail