Preface
Thematic Contents
Introduction
From Reading to Writing: The Conversation
Writing and Thinking: The Rhetorical Modes
Writing and Thinking: The Process
Reading to Write
Exploratory Writing
Drafting
Revising
Editing
Your Process
Writing Across the Curriculum
Reflecting, Reporting, Explaining, Arguing:
The Motives Explained
Part One: Arts and Humanities
Lucy Grealy, Mirrors (Reflecting)
Frederick Douglass, Learning to Read and Write (Reflecting)
*Junot Díaz, Homecoming with Turtle (Reflecting)
Amanda Coyne, The Long Goodbye: Mother’s Day in
a Federal Prison (Reporting)
Christina Boufis, Teaching Literature at the County
Jail (Reporting)
Jan Harold Brunvand, Urban Legends: "The Boyfriend’s
Death" (Explaining)
Steven Johnson, Watching TV Makes You Smarter (Arguing)
George Orwell, Politics and the English Language (Arguing)
James Baldwin, If Black English Isn’t a Language,
Then Tell Me, What Is? (Arguing)
Paired Readings: On Descriptive Writing
Joan Didion, On Keeping a Notebook (Explaining)
*Patricia Hampl, The Dark Art of Description (Reflecting)
Paired Readings: On Bilingualism
*Gloria Anzaldúa, How to Tame a Wild Tongue (Arguing)
Amy Tan, Mother Tongue (Reflecting)
Paired Readings: On Religious Belief
*Marjane Satrapi, The Veil (Reporting)
*Paul Bloom, Is God an Accident? (Arguing)
Part Two: Social Sciences and Public Affairs
Phyllis Rose, Tools of Torture: An Essay on
Beauty and Pain (Reflecting)
*Andrew Sullivan, What’s So Bad about Hate? (Reflecting)
Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not)
Getting By in America (Reporting)
Zoë Tracy Hardy, What Did You Do in the War,
Grandma? A Flashback to August, 1945 (Reporting)
*Olivia Judson, The Selfless Gene (Explaining)
Barbara Tuchman, "This Is the End of the World":
The Black Death (documented essay) (Explaining)
Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of
Independence (Arguing)
Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal (Arguing)
*Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (Arguing)
Paired Readings: On Animal-Human Conflicts
George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant (Reflecting)
*Charles Siebert, An Elephant Crackup (Reporting)
Paired Readings: On Race Relations
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from
Birmingham Jail (Arguing)
*Barack Obama, A More Perfect Union (Reflecting)
Paired Readings: On the Reality of War
John Berger, Hiroshima (Reporting)
*Various Authors, Soldiers’ Stories (Reflecting)
Part Three: Sciences
*Lewis Thomas, The Corner of the Eye (Reflecting)
*Melanie Thernstrom, My Pain, My Brain (Reflecting)
Roy C. Selby, Jr., A Delicate Operation (Reporting)
Jamie Shreeve, The Other Stem-Cell Debate (Reporting)
Bruno Bettelheim, Joey: A "Mechanical Boy" (Reporting)
*Greg Easterbrook, The Sky Is Falling (Explaining)
*Jonah Lehrer, Eureka Hunt (Explaining)
*Atul Gawande, The Checklist (Arguing)
*Steven Pinker, The Moral Instinct (Arguing)
Paired Readings: On Suffering
Richard Selzer, A Mask on the Face of Death (Reporting)
Abraham Verghese, Close Encounters of the
Human Kind (Reflecting)
Paired Readings: On Natural Phenomena
Diane Ackerman, Why Leaves Turn Color in
the Fall (Explaining)
James Jeans, Why the Sky is Blue (Explaining)
Paired Readings: On Sexual Reproduction
*Michael Pollan, Corn Sex (Explaining)
Emily Martin, The Egg and the Sperm: How
Science Has Constructed a Romance Based
on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles (Arguing)
Part Four: Casebooks
Virtual Experience: Life Online
*Andrew Sullivan, Why I Blog (Reflecting)
*Clive Thompson, I’m So Totally, Digitally, Close
to You: The Brave New World of Digital
Intimacy (Reporting)
*Marshall Poe, The Hive (Explaining)
*Anthony Grafton, Future Reading (Arguing)
*Nicholas Carr, Is Google Making Us Stupid? (Arguing)
*Guillermo Gómez-Peña, The Virtual Barrio @
the Other Frontier (Arguing)
The Classroom: Ideals, Obstacles, Solutions
*Mike Rose, I Just Wanna be Average (Reflecting)
*Emily Bazelon, The Next Kind of Integration (Reporting)
*Elizabeth Weil, Teaching to the Testosterone: The
Gender Wars Go to School (Reporting)
Theodore Sizer, What High School Is (Explaining)
Garret Keizer, Why We Hate Teachers (Arguing)
*Matt Miller, First, Kill All the School Boards (Arguing)
The Visual World: Sight and Insight
*Temple Grandin, Thinking in Pictures (Reflecting)
*Rita Carter, The Stream of Illusion (Reporting)
Plato, The Cave (Explaining)
Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for
a Hat (Explaining)
*Scott McCloud, Setting the Record Straight (Arguing)
*John Berger, Ways of Seeing (Arguing)
Grey Matter: The Brain and the Self
*Jill Bolte Taylor, Morning of the Stroke (Reflecting)
*Patricia Hampl, Memory and Imagination (Reflecting)
*V.S. Ramachandran, The Woman Who Died
Laughing (Reporting)
*Daniel Schacter, Of Time and Autobiography (Explaining)
*Shannon Moffett, Watching the Brain (Explaining)
Stephen Jay Gould, Women’s Brains (Arguing)
*Appendix A: Using Research
* new to this edition