Memorable, well-crafted writing from inside and outside the academy. Sixty-eight readings include works from favorite essayists like Frederick Douglass, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Oliver Sacks and engaging contemporary writing by Sherry Turkle, Mark Bittman, and Jhumpa Lahiri.
A flexible cross-curricular organization supports a variety of teaching approaches. The core structure is cross curricular, with a part each on readings from the humanities, social sciences, and hard sciences, and a fourth part where readings from those fields are combined in interdisciplinary casebooks. Within each part, essays are identified according rhetorical purpose — reflecting, reporting, explaining, and arguing — to anchor them to the writing needs of composition courses. Finally, a thematic table of contents introduces a third layer of teaching flexibility to the book.
Editorial apparatus that builds critical thinking, research, and writing skills. An introduction covers academic writing, including rhetoric, the writing process, and research.Questions following each essay test students' comprehension, help them connect the essay to other ideas in the book and discipline, and guide them in their own writing.