Table of Contents
Sridhar Pappu, Deranged Marriage
** Ian Frazier, How to Operate the Shower Curtain
* mark sections new to this edition.
Issues and Ideas: Advertising and Appearances
Jean E. Kilbourne, Beauty . . . And the Beast of
Advertising
Jessica Mitford, To Dispel Fears of Live Burial
1. Reading for Writer
2. Ways of Writing
Discovering
Planning
Drafting
Revising
3. Example
Andy Rooney, In and Of Ourselves We Trust
Brent Staples, Just Walk On By
** Jonah Lehrer, The Uses of Reason
Mary Karr, Dysfunctional Nation
Issues and Ideas: Identities
Wil Haygood, Underground Dads
Alan Buczynski, Iron Bonding
4. Classification
** Matt Carmichael, Get Radical, Get Some Rest
Michael Ventura, Don’t Even Think About It!
**Salman Akhtar, Remembering the Dead
Issues and Ideas: Images of Sound and Sight
Alissa Quart, Cinema of the In-Crowd
Brenda Peterson, Life Is a Musical
5. Comparison
Mark Twain, Two Ways of Seeing a River
Bruce Catton, Grant and Lee, A Study of Contrasts
Philip Lopate, A Nonsmoker with a Smoker
** Bill McKibben, Old Macdonald Had a Farmer’s Market
Alice Walker, Am I Blue?
Issues and Ideas: Gender Differences
Nicholas Wade, Method and Madness: How Men
and Women Think
Catherine Seipp, Meet Today’s Dad
6. Analogy
Lan Samantha Chang, Like Robinson Crusoe
Issues and Ideas: Humans and Animals
Tom Wolfe, O Rotten Gotham—Sliding Down
into the Behavioral Sink
Barbara Kingsolver, High Tide in Tucson
7. Process
Joe Buhler and Ron Graham, Give Juggling a Hand
** Jennifer Graham, How to Decorate a Dorm Room on a
Budget
8. Cause-Effect
Susan Perry and Jim Dawson, What’s Your Best Time of
Day
Mary Roach, My Father the Geezer
William Severini Kowinski, Kids in the Mall: Growing Up
Controlled
Issues and Ideas: Consuming
Cullen Murphy, Hello Darkness
** Verlyn Klinkenborg, Our Vanishing Night
9. Definition
John Berendt, The Hoax
Dagoberto Gilb, Pride
** Anne Fadiman, Coffee
Issues and Ideas: Defining Values and Roles
Carter, The Insufficiency of Honesty
Veronica Chambers, Mother’s Day
10. Description
Gary Soto, The Jacket
George Simpson, The War Room at Bellevue
Donna Tartt, A Garden Party
** Daniel Thomas Cook, Children of the Brand
Issues and Ideas: Place and Person
Barry Lopez, A Passage of the Hands
E. B. White, Once More to the Lake
11. Narration
Martin Gansberg, 38 Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call the
Police
Geoffrey Canada, Pain
** Pat Conroy, Chili Cheese Dogs, My Father, and Me
Issues and Ideas: Stories and Values
George Orwell, A Hanging
Wayne Worcester, Arms and the Man
12. Induction and Deduction
Nancy Friday, The Age of Beauty
Issues and Ideas: Digital Realities
Maia Szalavitz, A Virtual Life
J.C. Herz, Superhero Sushi
13. Argument
Issues and Ideas: Current Controversies
Christopher B. Daly, How the Lawyers Stole Winter
Stephanie Mills, Could You Live with Less?
Anna Quindlen, The Drug That Pretends It Isn’t
** Andrew O’Hehir, The Myth of Media Violence
** Elizabeth Svoboda, “I Am Not a Puzzle, I Am a Person”
Barbara Lawrence, Four-Letter Words Can Hurt You
Sarah Min, Language Lessons
14. Further Readings
** Jason Kelly, The Great TV Debate
Margaret Atwood, Pornography
Leslie Marmon Silko, Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the
Spirit
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail