Formatted Contents Note:
Introduction: Reading and Writing Essays -- Part I: Childhood and Family -- Salvation / Langston Hughes -- One Writer's Beginnings / Eudora Welty -- An American Childhood / Annie Dillard -- Silent Dancing / Judith Ortiz Cofer -- The Woman Warrior / Maxine Hong Kingston -- I Get Born / Zora Neale Hurston -- Home for Christmas / Carson McCullers -- Once More to the Lake / E.B. White -- Classic and Contemporary -- A Boy's Life / Mark Twain -- Momma, the Dentist and Me / Maya Angelou -- Part II: The Sense of Place -- Why I live Where I Live / Harry Crews -- The American Geographies / Barry Lopez -- Shooting an Elephant / George Orwell -- Boston: The Lost Ideal / Elizabeth Hardwick -- Vietnam: A Delicate Innocence / Pico Iyer -- Antigua: A Small Place / Jamaica Kincaid -- Disneyland / William Zinsser -- The Way to Rainy Mountain / N. Scott Momaday -- Classic and Contemporary -- Here is New York / E.B. White -- Miami: The Cuban Presence / Joan Didion -- Part III: Manners and Customs -- Superstitious Minds / Letty Cottin Pogrebin -- Pilgrims from the Orient / Jade Snow Wong -- Perils of Prohibition / Elizabeth M. Whelan -- Soul Food / Imamu Amiri Baraka -- Polygamy / Ann Grace Mojtabai -- For the Indians No Thanksgiving / Michael Dorris -- Philistines and Philistinism / Vladimir Nabakov -- Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self / Alice Walker -- Classic and Contemporary -- Some Reflections on American Manners / Alexis De TocQueville -- The Fundamentals of Contemporary Courtesy / P.J. O'Rourke -- Part IV: School and College -- Education / E.B. White -- Graduation / Maya Angelou -- By Any Other Name / Santha Ramu Rau -- Unplugged: The Myth of Computers in the Classroom / David Gelernter -- Sex Ed. / Anna Quindlen -- The Need for National Testing / Andrew Rooney -- "Bogus" Multiculturalism / Dinesh D'Souza -- Affirmative Action / Shelby Steele -- Learning to Read and Write / Frederick Douglass -- The Lonely, Good Company of Books / Richard Rodriguez -- Part V: Gender and Human Development -- New Passages / Gail Sheehy -- Stop Ironing the Diapers / Barbara Ehrenreich -- The Female Body / Margaret Atwood -- Foorprints in the Ashes of Time / Mary Leakey -- Being a Man / Paul Theroux -- Erotica and Pornography / Gloria Steinem -- What Men Are Missing / Michael Dorris -- Libidanal Types / Sigmund Freud -- Classic and Contemporary -- Sex versus Loveliness / D.H. Lawrence -- Beauty / Susan Sontag -- Part VI: Social Process and Institutions -- Straight Line to Calamity / George Will -- More Than Just a Shrine: Paying Homage to the Ghosts of Ellis Island / Mary Gordon -- The Circle of Governments / Niccolo Machiavelli -- Being Prohibited / Doris Lessing -- Community: The Web of Life / Scott Russell Sanders -- Grant and Lee: A Study in Contrasts / Bruce Catton -- What Really Ails America / William J. Bennett -- Wrong Ism / J.B. Priestley -- On Our Birthday-America as Idea / Barbara Tuchman -- Classic and Contemporary -- The Declaration of Independence / Thomas Jefferson -- I Have a Dream / Martin Luther King Jr. -- Part VII: Work, Business and Economics -- Men at Work / Anna Quindlen -- Battered Welfare Syndrome / Barbara Ehrenreich -- Being a Secretary can be Hazardous to your Health / Ellen Goodman -- My Wood / E.M. Forster -- A Modest Proposal / Jonathan Swift -- African-Americans and Automation / Jeremy Rifkin -- Los Pobres / Richard Rodriguez -- The American Way of Death / Jessica Mitford -- Classic and Contemporary -- Professions for Women / Virginia Woolf -- Delusions of Grandeur / Henry Louis Gates Jr. -- Part VIII: Language and Communications -- On Keeping a Notebook / Joan Didion -- How to Mark a Book / Mortimer J. Adler -- Sex, Lies and Conversation: Why Is It So Hard for Men and Women to Talk to Each Other? / Deborah Tannen -- The Language of Discretion / Amy Tan -- Words and Children / S.I. Hayakawa -- The Writer's Kitchen / Rosario Ferre -- Notes on Puncuation / Lewis Thomas -- Classic and Contemporary -- Politics and the English Language / George Orwell -- Who's in Charge of the English Language / Casey Miller and Kate Swift -- Part IX: Media and the Arts -- Television Addiction / Marie Winn -- Medea and the O.J. Media / John Corry -- The Mystery of Mickey Mouse / John Updike -- Georgia O'Keeffe / Joan Didion -- 2 Live Crew, Decoded / Henry Lous Gates Jr. -- Saving the Life That is Your Own: The Importance of Models in the Artist's Life / Alice Walker -- Red, White and Beer / Dave Barry -- Classic and Contemporary -- The Gangster as Tragic Hero / Robert Warshow -- The Theology of Pulp Ficiton / Ron Rosenbaum -- Part X: Philosophy, Ethics and Religion -- The Penalty of Death / H.L. Mencken -- The Death Penalty is a Step Back / Coretta Scott King -- I Listen to My Parents and I Wonder What I Believe / Robert Coles -- The Allegory of the Cave / Plato -- The New Immortality / Joseph Wood Krutch -- Periodic Worship of the Zunis / Ruth Benedict -- No Man is an Island / John Donne -- The Rival Conceptions of God / C.S. Lewis -- Classic and Contemporary -- The Death of the Moth / Virginia Woolf -- Death of a Moth / Annie Dillard -- Part XI: Nature and the Environment -- The Obligation to Endure / Rachel Carson -- Here Comes the Sun / Gregg Easterbrook -- How Natural is Natural? / Loren Eiseley -- Wyoming: The Solace of Open Spaces / Gretel Ehrlich -- Two Views of the Mississippi / Mark Twain -- Renegotiating the Contracts / Barry Lopez -- Against Nature / Joyce Carol Oates -- Americans and the Land / John Steinbeck -- Economy / Henry David Thereau -- Felling Trees / Sue Hubbell -- Part XII: Science, Medicine and Mathematics -- My Abortion / Deborah Salazar -- The Man with the Metal Nose / David Quammen -- On Societies as Organisms / Lewis Thomas -- Sarcophagus / Richard Selzer -- Cholesterol / Isaac Asimov -- Can we Know the Universe? Reflections on a Grain of Salt / Carl Sagan -- The Terrifying Normalcy of AIDS / Stephen Jay Gould -- On Being the Right Size / J.B.S. Haldane -- Classic and Contemporary -- The Study of Mathematics / Bertrand Russell -- When Bright Girls Decide That Math is a "Waste of Time" / Susan Jacoby -- Part XIII: Civilization -- Strangers in a Small World / Pico Iyer -- Myself in India / Ruth Prawer Jhabvala -- America: The Multinational Society / Ishmael Reed -- The Evil at the Dragon's Feet / Lance Morrow -- Our Universal Civilization / V.S. Naipaul -- Stranger in the Village / James Baldwin -- The World House / Martin Luther King Jr. -- Classic and Contemporary -- National Prejudices / Oliver Goldsmith -- The Cult of Ethnicity / Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. -- Glossary of Terms -- Acknowledgements -- Index.
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