Many more, varied, and contemporary readings throughout. Now with 82 selections overall (40% more than in the first edition) the text and reader balance lengthy, documented essays with brief, thought-provoking recent pieces, making the book more rich and flexible for teachers and more accessible and engaging for students. For example:
- The synthesis chapter now features a sequence of short essays that explore whether online writing practices, such as texting, develop students' sense of audience better than formal writing instruction.
- In the media studies chapter, a brief essay from Ms magazine on the anti-feminist message of the Twilight series plays off a documented academic analysis about the trials women superheroes-but not their male equivalents-need to undergo to prove themselves worthy of their powers.
- In the international relations chapter, a tart blog commentary by Barbara Ehrenreich on the foreign outsourcing of American news stories leads into a lengthy think piece by Fareed Zakaria on the dawning “post-American” world.
New model readings in Part One-many of them annotated-exemplify key academic writing tasks and assignments. New professional examples include literacy narratives by Richard Rodriguez and Gerald Graff. New student essays-all of them annotated to call out rhetorical and intellectual strategies-range from a short personal argument to a long researched argument that synthesizes sources.
The thematic reader is newly organized around specific disciplines. Representing a range of humanities, social sciences, sciences, and professions, the six chapters broadly address key issues in Education, Media Studies, Business, International Relations, Biology, and Environmental Studies.
Attention to the visual. In keeping with WPA guidelines on visual literacy, Chapter 9 on rhetorical appeals now uses advertisements to explain elements of visual rhetoric.