The Arlington Reader Contexts and Connections

What do you look for in a thematic composition reader? Certainly a combination of classic essays that you think every student should read as well as fresh contemporary selections that showcase some of the best contemporary writing and writers. Probably an array of relevant themes that appeal to students even as they point toward the disciplinary thinking and writing students will have to perform as undergraduates. Likely the kind of writing apparatus that moves students from critical reading to thoughtful writing and revising. The Arlington Readeroffers all this -- and more. It is the only thematic reader to pay attention to the contexts and connections that give rise to great writing, with contextual documents that illuminate some of the most celebrated essays in the composition canon, and paired readings that stimulate comparative critical thinking and writing. Further, it is the least expensive and most manageable full-service thematic reader on the market, with a price students can afford and in a size they'll be happy to carry in their backpacks.

LYNN Z. BLOOM is Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor and holder of the Aetna Chair of Writing at the University of Connecticut. Previously, she taught and directed writing programs at Butler University, the University of New Mexico, and the College of William and Mary, and she chaired the English department at Virginia Commonwealth University. Lynn Bloom's publications include composition studies, biography, autobiography, creative nonfiction, poetry, reviews, articles, book chapters, and textbooks.  LOUISE Z. SMITH is Professor emerita of English at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and former Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. A member of the faculty there since 1974, she also served as the Director of Freshman English; Chair of English; Director of the Tutoring Program; and Director, Core Curriculum. In addition to the many articles and book chapters she has written for publication, Louise Smith was the editor of College English from 1991 to 1999.

Preface for InstructorsIntroduction: Reading and Writing in Context
     Reading in Context
     Writing in Context  CHAPTER 1. SPEAKING, READING, WRITINGHow does language make us human? *Paula Scher, Fogelson-Lubliner, and Neville Brody and Jeff Knowles, Better Signs of Trouble [icons]Eudora Welty, Listening
Amy Tan, Mother Tongue
Leslie Marmon Silko, Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective
Sherman Alexie, The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me
Richard Wright, From Fighting Words
Scott McCloud, Reading the Comics
Joan Didion, On Keeping a NotebookContexts for On Keeping a Notebook
Why I Write -- Tom Wolfe, The New Journalism -- Last Words o Interview (1999) -- Wendy Bishop, Revision is a Recursive Process -- Katherine Anne Porter, You Do Not Create a Style. You Work…Peter Elbow, Freewriting
Paired Readings: Why We Write
Stephen King, Write or Die
*Elie Wiesel, Why I Write: Making No Become Yes
*Philip Niemeyer, Picturing the Past Ten Years [graphics]
Marjorie Agosín, Always Living in Spanish
*David Brown, Science Reporting and Evidence-Based Journalism  CHAPTER 2. IDENTITY WITH ATTITUDEWho am I, and why does it matter?  Franz Boas and George Hunt, An “Authentic” Indian [photograph]
Eric Liu, Notes of a Native Speaker
Esmeralda Santiago, Jíbara
Bobbie Ann Mason, Being Country
Art Spiegelman, Mein Kampf (My Struggle) [graphic essay]
Maxine Hong Kingston, On Discovery
Sherman Alexie, What Sacagawea Means to Me
N. Scott Momaday, The Way to Rainy Mountain Contexts for The Way to Rainy Mountain
Rainy Mountain [photograph] -- East of My Grandmother's House -- I Invented History -- Disturbing the Spirits: Indian Bones Must Stay in the Ground -- The Native Voice -- The Whole Journey -- Three Voices o Paula Gunn Allen, Voice of the Turtle: American Indian Literature, 1900-1970 -- Portrait of N. Scott Momaday [photograph] *Heather King, The Closest to Love We Ever Get
Paired Readings: Double Consciousness
James Baldwin Stranger in the Village
W.E.B. Du Bois, The “Veil” of Self-Consciousness
Sojourner Truth, Ain't I a Woman?
Bob Daemmrich, Nobody Knows I'm Gay [photograph]
Gloria Anzaldúa, From Beyond Traditional Notions of Identity
Deirdre N. McCloskey, Yes, Ma'am  CHAPTER 3. RELATIONSHIPS AND LIFE CHOICESLife, love, work, play-what's the best balance?  Kim Warp, Rising Sea Levels--An Alternative Theory [cartoon]
Anna Quindlen, Anniversary
*Brian Doyle, Joyas Voladoras
E.B. White, Once More to the Lake
*Gregory Orr, Return to Hayneville
Scott Russell Sanders, Under the Influence: Paying the Price of My Father's Booze
Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens Contexts for In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens
James Baldwin, Autobiographical Notes -- Amiri Baraka, The Myth of Negro Literature -- Daniel Patrick Moynihan, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action -- My Grandmother Takes in Washing [poster] -- Interview (1983) -- Toni Morrison, The Pain of Being Black Paired Readings: Working With Your Hands
Barbara Ehrenreich, Serving in Florida
Malcolm Gladwell, The Physical Genius
Mary Ellen Mark, The Damm Family in Their Car, Los Angeles, 1987 [photograph]
*Matthew B. Crawford, The Case for Working with Your Hands
*Virginia Woolf, Professions for Women”  CHAPTER 4. EDUCATION AND THE AMERICAN CHARACTERWhat do we teach? What do we learn? And why does this matter?  Simon McComb, Education in Open Air [photograph]
*Stanley Fish, Gerald Graff, James MacGregor Burns, Nancy Hopkins, College Advice, From People Who Have Been There Awhile
David Sedaris, What I Learned And What I Said at Princeton
*Charles M Schultz, Peanuts: Slow Reading [cartoon]
Jonathan Kozol, The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society
Deborah Franklin, “Informed Consent” - What Information? What Consent?
*Social Psychology Network, Tips on Informed Consent
Dave Leonhardt, The College Dropout Boom
Richard Rodriguez, Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood
Contexts for “Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”
Rodriguez at Eighteen [photograph] -- Interview Excerpt -- Slouching towards Los Angeles -- Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude -- Rodriguez as a Mask [photograph] Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy -- Paul Zweig, The Child of Two Cultures o Interview (1999) Will Counts, Central High School, Little Rock, Arkansas, September 4, 1957 [photograph]
Paired Readings: Knowing the World
Plato, The Allegory of the Cave
Howard Gardner, Who Owns Intelligence?
*Marjane Satrapi , The Convocation
Linda Simon, The Naked Source  *CHAPTER 5. WIRED-BE CAREFUL WHAT WE WISH FORWhat are the consequences of life in the high-tech fast lane?  Roz Chast, The IMs of Romeo and Juliet [cartoon]
Denis Baron, The New Technologies of the Word
*Nicholas Carr, Is Google Making Us Stupid?
*Ray Kurzweil, Frontiers
*Sherry Turkle , How Computers Change the Way We Think
*Contexts for “How Computers Change the Way We Think”
From The Human Spirit in a Computer Culture -- From Life on the Screen: Identity and The Age of the Internet -- Larry Williams, Multitasking Man -- Inner History: Collection and ReCollection in the Digital Archive -- James Gleick, from Cyber-Neologiferation -- John Hockenberry, from The Blogs of War -- William Deresiewicz, from Faux Friendship  *G. Anthony Gorry, Empathy in the Virtual World
*Paired Readings: Wired Privacy
*Esther Dyson, Reflections on Privacy 2.0
*Daniel J. Solove, The End of Privacy?
*Cathy Guisewite, We Saw Paris [cartoon]
*Amitai Etzioni with Radhika Bhat, Second Chances, Social Forgiveness, and the Internet
Michael J. Bugeja, Facing the Facebook
*Joseph Fuller, The Terminator Comes to Wall Street  CHAPTER 6. SCIENCE--DISCOVERY, INVENTION, CONTROVERSYIf we're so smart, why don't we live in utopia?  Henry Groskinsky, Replaceable You [photograph]
Ellen Goodman, Cure or Quest for Perfection?
Bill McKibben, Designer Genes
*Freeman Dyson, Our Biotech Future
*Lewis Thomas, The Technology of Medicine
Stephen Jay Gould, Evolution as Fact and Theory Contexts for Evolution as Fact and Theory
Thomas Henry Huxley, Evolution and Ethics -- Phillip E. Johnson, The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism -- James Gleick, Stephen Jay Gould: Breaking Tradition with Darwin *Marisa Acocella Marchetto, How Chemo Works [frame from graphic memoir]
Charles Darwin, Understanding Natural Selection
Paired Readings: Bad Science
Robert L. Park, The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science
Stanley Fish, Academic Cross-Dressing: How Intelligent Design Gets its Arguments from the Left
Natalie Angier, Men, Women, Sex, And Darwin
Edward O. Wilson, Microbes 3, Humans 2  CHAPTER 7. ETHICSWhat principles do-and should-we live by?  Leonard Freed, Martin Luther King Jr. after Receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, Baltimore, 1963 [photograph]
Jeffrey Wattles, The Golden Rule-One or Many, Gold or Glitter?
John Donne, Meditation 17 (For Whom the Bell Tolls)
*United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Martin Luther King, Jr. , Letter from Birmingham Jail Contexts for Letter from Birmingham Jail
Eight Clergymen's Statement -- Brooks Hays, A Southern Moderate Speaks -- King and Abernathy Under Arrest [photograph] -- King and Abernathy [photograph] -- T. Olin Binkley, Southern Baptist Seminaries -- Will Herberg, A Religious 'Right' to Violate the Law? -- Boycotts Will Be Used -- Martin Luther King, Jr. Defines “Black Power”George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant
Lynda Barry, Hate [graphic essay]
*Paired Readings: Ethics of Eating and Cooking
*Michael Pollan, An Ethic of Eating
*Barbara Kingsolver, Home Cooking
*Edward Hoagland, Children Are Diamonds
Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother [photograph]
Peter Singer, The Singer Solution to World Poverty
Kelly Ritter, The Economics of Authorship: Online Paper Mills, Student Writers, and First-Year Composition
*Natasha Singer and Duff Wilson, Medical Editors Push for Ghostwriting Crackdown  *CHAPTER 8. THE ENVIRONMENTWill we save it or lose it? Will this be the end of the world as we know it?
*James P. Blair, Haiti and the Dominican Republic [photograph]
Terry Tempest Williams, The Clan of One-Breasted Women
*Al Gore, A Planetary Emergency
*Wangari Maathai, The Green Belt Movement
*Vaclav Havel, Our Moral Footprint
Henry David Thoreau, Where I Lived and What I Lived For
Annie Dillard, Heaven and Earth in Jest Contexts for “Heaven and Earth in Jest”
Annie Dillard [photograph] -- Henry David Thoreau, from Journal -- from The Koran --
Blaise Pascal, Pensées -- Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco -- Wendell Berry, A Secular Pilgrimage Rachel Carson, The Obligation to Endure
Paired Readings: Troubled Ecosystems
William E. Rees, Life in the Lap of Luxury as Ecosystems Collapse
*Sandra Postel, Troubled Waters
*Paul Saunders, Kangerlua Glacier Melting
*Jared Diamond, The World as Polder
*Wendell Berry, Faustian Economics
 
* new to this edition