Topical Clusters
Rhetorical Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
1. Becoming a Critical Reader
Reading and Meaning
Reading Critically
Recording Your Reactions
Reacting to Visual Texts
2. Writing about Reading
Understanding Your Assignment
Understanding Your Purpose
Understanding Your Audience
Writing a Response
Collecting Ideas
Developing a Thesis
Arranging Supporting Material
Drafting Your Essay
Revising Your Essay
3. Family and Memory
Poetry: Linda Hogan, Heritage
Poetry: Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays
E. B. White, Once More to the Lake
Kristin Ohlson, The Great Forgetting
Laila Lalami, My Fictional Grandparents
Gary Shteyngart, Sixty-Nine Cents
Tao Lin, When I Moved Online . . .
Focus: Are Tiger Mothers Really Better?
Amy Chua, Adapted from Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
David Brooks, Amy Chua Is a Wimp
Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld, Why I Love My Strict Chinese Mom
4. Issues in Education
Lynda Barry, The Sanctuary of School
John Holt, School Is Bad for Children
Bich Minh Nguyen, The Good Immigrant Student
Johann N. Neem, Online Higher Education's Individualist Fallacy 91
Christina Hoff Sommers, For More Balance on Campuses
Jill Filipovic, We've Gone Too Far with 'Trigger Warnings'
Poetry: Martin Espada, Why I Went to College
Focus: Is a College Education Worth the Money?
David Leonhardt, Is College Worth It? Clearly, New Data Say
Jacques Steinberg, Plan B: Skip College
Liz Dwyer, Is College Worth the Money? Answers from Six New Graduates
5. The Politics of Language
Radley Balko, The Curious Grammar of Police Shootings
Chase Fleming, Is Social Media Hurting Our Social Skills? [Infographic]
Dallas Spires, Will Text Messaging Destroy the English Language?
Amy Tan, Mother Tongue
Frederick Douglass, Learning to Read and Write
Alleen Pace Nilsen, Sexism in English: Embodiment and Language
Jonathan Kozol, The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society
Poetry: Charles Jensen, Poem in Which Words Have Been Left Out
Focus: How Free Should Free Speech Be?
Jonathan Turley, Shut Up and Play Nice: How the Western World Is Limiting Free Speech
Jonathan Rauch, Kindly Inquisitors, Revisited
Thane Rosenbaum, Should Neo-Nazis be Allowed Free Speech?
6. Media and Society
Mary Eberstadt, Eminem Is Right
Zeynep Tufekci, After the Protests
Sherry Turkle, Connectivity and Its Discontents
Steven Pinker, Mind over Mass Media
Jane McGonigal, Reality Is Broken
Fiction: Lydia Davis, Television
Focus: Why Are Zombies Invading Our Media?
Amy Wilentz, A Zombie Is a Slave Forever
Max Brooks, The Movies That Rose from the Grave
Erica E. Phillips, Zombie Studies Gain Ground on College Campuses
7. Gender and Identity
E. J. Graff, The M/F Boxes
Sheryl Sandberg and Anna Maria Chavez, 'Bossy,' the Other B-Word
Judy Brady, Why I Want a Wife
Glenn Sacks, Stay-at-Home Dads
Deborah Tannen, Marked Women
Fiction: Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour
Focus: Who Has It Harder, Girls or Boys?
Margaret Talbot, The Case against Single-Sex Classrooms
Christina Hoff Sommers, The War against Boys
Rosalind C. Barnett and Caryl Rivers, Men Are from Earth, and So Are Women: It's Faulty Research That Sets Them Apart
8. Culture and Identity
Poetry: Rhina Espaillat, Bilingual/Bilingue
Reza Aslan, Praying for Common Ground at the Christmas-Dinner Table
Elizabeth Wong, The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl
Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria
Jeffery Sheler and Michael Betzold, Muslim in America
Brett Krutzsch, The Gayest One
Melanie Scheller, On the Meaning of Plumbing and Poverty
Drama: Steven Korbar, What Are You Going to Be?
Focus: Do Racial Distinctions Still Matter?
Cindy Y. Rodriguez, Which Is It, Hispanic or Latino?
Brent Staples, Why Race Isn't as 'Black' and 'White' as We Think
John H. McWhorter, Why I'm Black, Not African American
9. The American Dream
Brent Staples, Just Walk On By
Jonathan Rieder, Dr. King's Righteous Fury
Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence
Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address
Jose Antonio Vargas, Outlaw: My Life in America as an Undocumented Immigrant
Poetry: Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus
Focus: Is the American Dream Still Attainable?
Michael W. Kraus, Shai Davidai, and A. David Nussbaum, American Dream? Or Mirage?
Neal Gabler, The New American Dream
Robert D. Putnam, Crumbling American Dreams
10. Why We Work
Andrew Curry, Why We Work
Debora L. Spar, Crashing into Ceilings: A Report from the Nine-to-Five Shift
Ben Mauk, When Work Is a Game, Who Wins?
David Brooks, It's Not about You
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Delusions of Grandeur
Warren Farrell, Exploiting the Gender Gap
Poetry: Walt Whitman, I Hear America Singing
Focus: Is Every Worker Entitled to a Living Wage?
Jeannette Wicks-Lim, Measuring the Full Impact of Minimum and Living Wage Laws
The Daily Take Team, the Thom Hartmann Program, If a Business Won't Pay a Living Wage, It Shouldn't Exist
James Dorn, The Minimum Wage Delusion, and the Death of Common Sense
11. Making Ethical Choices
Poetry: Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
Poetry: Linda Pastan, Ethics
David A. Hoekema, The Unacknowledged Ethicists on Campuses
Jonathan Safran Foer, How Not to Be Alone
Barbara Hurd, Fracking: A Fable
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail
Claire McCarthy, Dog Lab
Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal
Focus: What Has Happened to Academic Integrity?
Richard A. Posner, The Truth about Plagiarism
Julie J. C. H. Ryan, Student Plagiarism in an Online World
David Callahan, A Better Way to Prevent Cheating: Appeal to Fairness
12. Facing the Future
Poetry: Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach
John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address
Rachel Carson, The Obligation to Endure
Joel Kotkin, The Changing Demographics of America
Neal Gabler, The Elusive Big Idea
Michael S. Malone, The Next American Frontier
Neal Stephenson, Innovation Starvation
Focus: What Comes Next?
Hilda L. Solis, Commencement Speech, Los Angeles City College, 2010
Paul Hawken, Commencement Speech, University of Portland, 2009
Colin Powell, Commencement Speech, Howard University, 1994
Appendix MLA Documentation
In-Text Citations
Works Cited
Credits
Index of Authors and Titles
