13 new thematic clusters — on topics students care about include: "You Are What You Eat," with a photo essay and a brief argument by Michael Pollan; "The Human Imagination," with an essay by Sims creator Will Wright and images from virtual communities; and "The Ethics of Consumption," with a humorous commentary by Bill McKibben, a spoof on the over-the-top in-flight magazine SkyMall, and a treatise against bottled water.
All kinds of new texts:
- New verbal texts (more than 60) include essays by major writers such as Jhumpa Lahiri on dual identities; the Freakonomics authors on names and class; and Brent Staples on being a black man in public space — familiar works and themes that you expect to see in a composition reader. You’ll also find a Greek myth; an urban legend; and a 20th-century diatribe against science.
- New visual and multimedia texts (more than 200) include a graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel; an annotated painting by Edward Hopper; a bevy of FOUND artifacts; documentary photos of the Civil War and Civil Rights era; a cool map of the Internet; and America’s very first cartoon.
More help with reading and writing. New pre-reading questions and discussion and writing prompts follow the texts. More questions in the margins of the readings spark analytical thinking; and writing assignments at the end of each chapter are now labeled to make clear the many kinds of writing students are being asked to do (analyze, compare, make a case, etc.). Handy new chapter and cluster menus make the book even easier to use.
A revised Introduction teaches reading, writing, and analysis.
- A new section on the book’s approach tracks a single message ("Will you marry me?") through a series of annotated images, showing students that there are many ways to convey a message, and many ways to unpack messages in their writing.
- A new annotated student essay models the kind of writing done for the composition course. Wyoming student Milos Kosic draws on three readings from the "What’s in a Name?" cluster to make a case about identity, memorials, and history. The paper, documented in MLA style, has been annotated by editor Robert Atwan to help students see the writing techniques at work.
- A new section on comics presents a work by the great Art Spiegelman and helps students approach graphic texts critically. This comic has also been annotated by the editor to point out ways of reading and thinking about the work.