Containing both classic essays and contemporary readings, 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology helps you stay engaged as you establish the writing abilities required for academic success.

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

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