50 Essays: A Portable Anthology (High School Edition) for the AP® English Language Course

The carefully chosen selections in 50 Essays include both classic essays and high-interest, high-quality contemporary readings to hold students’ interest, inspire their writing, and prepare them to work with nonfiction at the college level. 50 Essays will help your AP® English Language students acquire the critical thinking and academic writing skills they need to succeed.

AP® is a trademark registered and/or owned by the College Board, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, this product.

Samuel Cohen (PhD, City University of New York) is Associate Professor of English at the University of Missouri. He is the author of After the End of History: American Fiction in the 1990s, co-editor (with Lee Konstantinou) of The Legacy of David Foster Wallace, Series Editor of The New American Canon: The Iowa Series in Contemporary Literature and Culture, and has published in such journals as Novel, Clio, Twentieth-Century Literature, The Journal of Basic Writing, and Dialogue: A Journal for Writing Specialists. For Bedford/St. Martin's, he is author of 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology and coauthor of Literature: The Human Experience.

Preface for Instructors

Alternative Tables of Contents

　　　　By rhetorical mode

　　　　By purpose

　　　　By theme

　　　　By clusters and paired readings

　　　　By chronological order

Introduction for Students: Active Reading, Critical Thinking, and the Writing Process

Readings

　　　　Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, To My One Love

　　　　Sherman Alexie, The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me

　　　　Gloria Anzaldúa, How to Tame a Wild Tongue

　　　　Barbara Lazear Ascher, On Compassion

　　　　James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

　　　　James Boswell, On War

　　　　William f. Buckley Jr., Why Don’t We Complain?

　　　　Alan Burdick, The Truth about Invasive Species

　　　　Nicholas Carr, Is Google Making Us Stupid?

　　　　Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Paranoid Style of American Policing

　　　　Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named María

　　　　Daniel Defoe, The Education of Women

　　　　Joan Didion, On Keeping a Notebook

　　　　Frederick Douglass, Learning to Read and Write

　　　　Brian Doyle, Joyas Voladores

　　　　Barbara Ehrenreich, Serving in Florida

　　　　Lars Eighner, On Dumpster Diving

　　　　Stephanie Ericsson, The Ways We Lie

　　　　Malcolm Gladwell, Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted

　　　　Christina Henriquez, Lunch

　　　　Langston Hughes, Salvation

　　　　Zora Neale Hurston, How It Feels to Be Colored Me

　　　　Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence

　　　　Camden Joy, Surviving Sinatra

　　　　Jamaica Kincaid, The Ugly Tourist

Questions on Rhetoric and Style

　　　　Stephen King, Reading to Write

　　　　Verlyn Klinkenborg, Our Vanishing Night

　　　　Audre Lorde, The Fourth of July

　　　　Nancy Mairs, On Being a Cripple

　　　　Malcolm X, Learning to Read

　　　　John McPhee, The Search for Marvin Gardens

　　　　Lydia Millet, Victor’s Hall

　　　　Bharati Mukherjee, Two Ways to Belong in America

　　　　George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant

　　　　Plato, The Allegory of the Cave

　　　　Richard Rodriguez, from Aria

　　　　Mike Rose, "I Just Wanna Be Average"

　　　　Oliver Sacks, My Periodic Table

　　　　David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day

　　　　Brent Staples, Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space

　　　　John Jeremiah Sullivan, Feet in Smoke

　　　　Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal

　　　　Amy Tan, Mother Tongue

　　　　Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

　　　　James Thurber, The Subjunctive Mood

　　　　Miya Tokumitsu, In the Name of Love

　　　　E. B. White, Once More to the Lake

　　　　Colson Whitehead, The Loser Edit

　　　　Viriginia Woolf, Professions for Women

　　　　Dave Zirin, Pre-Game

Documentation Guide

Glossary of Writing Terms