About the Book
For courses in Freshman Composition.
Based on the assumption that lucid thinking, reading, and writing are so closely interwoven as to be one process, this rhetorical reader helps students improve their abilities to think, read, and write on progressively more sophisticated levels by providing a collection of 60 provocative and interesting essays. The essays are accompanied by apparatus that includes clear, well-developed rhetorical introductions, sample student essays, prewriting questions, and flexible writing assignments. The essays cover a broad range of contemporary topics and portray the universality of human experience as expressed through the viewpoints of men and women, many different ethnic and racial groups, and a variety of ages and social classes.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Thinking, Reading, and Writing.
1. Description: Exploring Through the Senses.
Summer Rituals, Ray Bradbury. Notes from the Country Club, Kimberly Wozencraft. The Pines, John McPhee. The View from 80, Malcolm Cowley. Land and Bones, Susan Austin.
2. Narration: Telling a Story.
For My Indian Daughter, Lewis Sawaquat. New Directions, Maya Angelou. The Saturday Evening Post, Russell Baker. Only Daughter, Sandra Cisneros. How the Crab Apple Grew, Garrison Keillor.
3. Example: Illustrating Ideas.
The Baffling Question, Bill Cosby. Hating the Sick: Health Chauvinism and Its Cure, Fred Pelka. Darkness at Noon, Harold Krents. Mother Tongue, Amy Tan. A Brother's Murder, Brent Staples.
4. Process Analysis: Explaining Step by Step.
Managing Your Time, Edwin Bliss. Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain, Jessica Mitford. How to Say Nothing in Five Hundred Words, Paul Roberts. Accidents, Suicide and Euthanasia, Sherwin Nuland. E-mail: What You Should—And Shouldn't—Say, Mark Hansen.
5. Division/Classification: Finding Categories.
Memory: Tips You'll Never Forget, Phyllis Schneider. Why I Want a Wife, Judy Brady. Second Chances for Children of Divorce, Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee. Confessions of an Ex-Smoker, Franklin Zimring. The Truth About Lying, Judith Viorst.
6. Comparison/Contrast: Discovering Similarities.
Grant and Lee: A Study in Contrasts, Bruce Catton. A Child Is Born, Germaine Greer. Japanese and American Workers: Two Casts of Mind, William Ouchi. The Politics of Muscle, Gloria Steinem. Living Like Weasels, Annie Dillard.
7. Definition: Limiting the Frame of Reference.
When Is It Rape?, Nancy Gibbs. The Barrio, Robert Ramirez. Beliefs About Families, Mary Pipher. How to Find True Love: Or Rather, How It Finds You, Lois Smith Brady. A Working Community, Ellen Goodman.
8. Cause/Effect: Tracing Reasons and Results.
Why We Crave Horror Movies, Stephen King. The Broken Cord, Michael Dorris. The Fear of Losing a Culture, Richard Rodriguez. Meet the Bickersons, Mary Roach. Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self, Alice Walker.
9. Argument and Persuasion: Inciting People to Thought or Action.
Arming Myself with a Gun Is Not the Answer, Bronwyn Jones. Affirmative Action: The Price of Preference, Shelby Steele. Take a Ticket, Peter Salins. Opposing Viewpoints: Computers and Books: The Demise of Writing, Geoffrey Meredith. Will We Still Turn Pages?, Kevin Kelly. Opposing Viewpoints: Freedom of the Press: Freedom of the Press Must Be Unlimited, Mario Cuomo. Freedom of the Press Must Be Limited, John Merrill.
10. Documented Essays: Reading and Writing from Sources.
The Ecstasy of War, Barbara Ehrenreich. Appearance and Delinquency: A Research Note, Jill Leslie Rosenbaum and Meda Chesney-Lind.
11. Essays on Thinking, Reading, and Writing.
I Am Writing Blindly, Roger Rosenblatt. Listening, Eudora Welty. Good Reasons to Hone Your Writing Skills, Diane Russo Cody. To Read Fiction, Donald Hall. What Will Replace the Internet?, Vinton Cerf. The Rules of Writing Practice, Natalie Goldberg. How to Write with Style, Kurt Vonnegut. The Death of Reading, Mitchell Stephens. Instantly Growing Up, John Greenwood. Writing as a Moral Act, Rita Mae Brown.
Glossary of Useful Terms.
Credits.
Index of Authors and Titles.
