Fields of Reading

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Part One: An Introduction to WritingFrom Reading to Writing

     Conversations across the Disciplines   

     How to Use this Book

     Writing and Thinking: The Rhetorical Modes

     The Writing Process

     Writing Across the Curriculum

The Modes Explained

     Reflecting

     Reporting

     Explaining

     Arguing

     Reflecting, Reporting, Explaining, Arguing

Researching to Write

     Developing a Research Question

     Using the Internet Effectively

     Evaluating Sources

     Organizing Your Ideas and Materials

     Incorporating Quotations

     Documenting Sources

          Using MLA Style (including student sample)

          Using APA Style (including student sample)

Part Two: Arts and Humanities

Frederick Douglass, Learning to Read and Write (Reflecting)

*Dudley Clendinen, The Good Short Life (Reflecting)

*Jhumpa Lahiri, Trading Stories (Reflecting)

Amanda Coyne, The Long Goodbye: Mother’s Day in a Federal Prison (Reporting)

Christina Boufis, Teaching Literature at the County Jail (Reporting)

Plato, The Cave (Explaining) 

Jan Harold Brunvand, Urban Legends: "The Boyfriend’s Death" (Explaining)

Steven Johnson, Watching TV Makes You Smarter (Arguing)

James Baldwin, If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is? (Arguing)

Scott McCloud, Setting the Record Straight (Arguing)  

Andrew Sullivan, Why I Blog (Reflecting)

*Mona Eltahawy, Twitterholics Anonymous (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)

*Jennifer Bernal, Child on the Threshold: The Voice of a Child in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis

*e-Page Isabelle Allende, Writing Process

*e-Page T.M. Luhrmann, When God Talks Back Part

Part Three: Social Sciences

*Jose Antonio Vargas, My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant (Reflecting)

George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant (Reflecting)

John Berger, Hiroshima (Reporting)

Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickled and Dimed (Reporting)

Barbara Tuchman, This is the End of the World (Reporting) (Documented)

*Robin Marantz Henig, What is it about 20 Somethings?  (Explaining)

Olivia Judson, The Selfless Gene (Explaining)

*Mark Bittman, Bad Food? Tax It, and Subsidize Vegetables (Arguing)

Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence (Arguing)

Jonathan Swift, "A Modest Proposal" (Arguing)

George Orwell, Politics and the English Language (Arguing)

*Brooke Gladstone, The Great Refusal (Explaining)

Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail (Arguing)

Barack Obama, "A More Perfect Union" (Reflecting)

Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (Arguing)

Various Authors, Soldiers' Stories (Reflecting)

*Muaz Paracha, Political Food: Big Business and the State of Food Safety in the United States

*e-Page Dan Ariely, The Context of Our Character

*e-Page Good.is, Not Your Parents’ American Dream

Part Four: The Sciences

*Richard Feynman, The Value of Science (Arguing)

*Ann Jurecic, Mindblindness (Reflecting) (Documented Essay)

Jill Bolte Taylor, On the Morning of the Stroke (Reflecting)

Lewis Thomas, The Corner of the Eye (Reflecting)

Jonah Lehrer, The Eureka Hunt (Reporting)

Diane Ackerman, Why Leaves Turn Color in the Fall (Explaining)

Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (Explaining)

Steven Pinker, The Moral Instinct (Arguing)

Emily Martin, The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles (Arguing)

Paired Readings: On Scientific Literacy

*Natalie Angier, The Canon (Reporting)

*Thomas W. Martin, Scientific Literacy and the Habit of Discourse (Arguing)

*Margaret Talbot, Brain Gain (Reporting)

*Walter Kirn, A Pharmalogical Education (Reflecting)

Roy C. Selby Jr., A Delicate Operation (Reporting)

Richard Selzer, A Mask on the Face of Death (Reflecting)

*Lindsay Gellman, "The Moral Meaning of a Pause": Ethics Committees and the Cloning Debate

*e-Page Michael Shermer, The Baloney Detection Kit: A 10-Point Checklist for Science Literacy

*e-Page Ian Gilchrest, Our Brains May Be Making Us Unhappy: A Plea for a More Right Brained

*James Gleick, Meme Pool (Explaining)

*David Friedman, From 1890: The First Text Messages (Reporting)

*Hillary Rodham Clinton, Internet Writes and Wrongs: Choices & Challenges in a Networked World (Arguing)

Clive Thompson, I’m So Totally, Digitally, Close to You: The Brave New World of Digital Intimacy (Reporting)

*Jeffrey Rosen, The End of Forgetting (Explaining)

Nicholas Carr, Is Google Making Us Stupid? (Arguing)

*Sherry Turkle, Connectivity and its Discontents (Arguing)

*e-Page Know Your Meme, What People Think I Do/What I Really Do

*Gary Gutting, What is College For? (Arguing)

*Mark Edmundson, "On the Uses of a College Education" (Reflecting)

*David Leonhardt, "Even for Cashiers, College Pays Off" (Reporting)

*Cathy N. Davidson, "Project Classroom Makeover" (Arguing) (Documented Essay)

*James Traub, "The Next Drive-Thru U" (Reporting)

*Linda Lee, "The Case Against College" (Arguing)

*George Felton, How to Write a Great College Slogan (Explaining)

*e-Page Michael Oatman, Admittance to a Better Life　

*Anne Fausto-Sterling, "Society Constructs Biology; Biology Constructs Gender (Arguing) (Documented Essay)

*EJ Graff, "The M/F Boxes" (Reporting)

*Jay Prosser, "The Body Narrative of Transexuality" (Reflecting)

*Peggy Orenstein, "What Make a Woman a Woman" (Reflecting)

Stephen Jay Gould, "On Women's Brains" (Arguing)

*Tina Fey, Lessons from Late Night (Reflecting)

*Michael Chabon, Faking It (Reflecting)

*e-Page Stephen T. Asma, Gauging Gender

*e-Page Jennifer Siebel Newsom, Miss Representation

*New to this edition