Guided Tour of American Literature & Rhetoric

1 Rhetorical Analysis

ACTIVITY Recognizing Civil Discourse

The Rhetorical Situation
Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address

Occasion, Context, and Purpose
ACTIVITY Defining a Rhetorical Situation

The Rhetorical Triangle
ACTIVITY Analyzing the Rhetorical Situation
Billie Jean King, Serena Is Still Treated Differently Than Male Athletes

Rhetorical Appeals
Ethos
          Building Ethos
     J. D. Vance, from Hillbilly Elegy
     ACTIVITY Building Ethos
Logos
          Conceding and Refuting
     ACTIVITY Analyzing Logos and Counterargument
     Jia Tolentino, from What It Takes to Put Away Your Phone
Pathos
          Making Balanced Appeals
          Richard Nixon, from The Checkers Speech
     ACTIVITY Analyzing Pathos
     Diana Abu-Jaber, from On Recognition and Nation
Combining Ethos, Logos, and Pathos
     Helen Keller, Letter to Mark Twain, 1906
     ACTIVITY Combining Ethos, Logos, and Pathos
Analyzing Visual Texts | Identifying Rhetorical Appeals
     Tom Toles, Rosa Parks (cartoon)
     ACTIVITY Identifying Rhetorical Appeals in a Visual Text
     Nate Beeler, Government Is Watching (cartoon)

Analyzing Rhetoric and Style
Diction
          Figurative Language
     ACTIVITY Analyzing Diction
     John Muir, from Save the Redwoods
Syntax
     ACTIVITY Analyzing Syntax
     John F. Kennedy, from Inaugural Address
Tone
     ACTIVITY Analyzing Tone
Analyzing Visual Texts | Analyzing Visual Rhetoric
     Dodge Durango (advertisement)
     ACTIVITY Close Reading a Visual Text
     KFC Hot and Spicy Chicken (advertisement)

From Reading to Writing: Crafting a Rhetorical Analysis Essay
Shirley Chisholm, from People and Peace, Not Profits and War
Preparing to Write: Annotating Nonfiction
ACTIVITY Annotating an Excerpt
Developing a Thesis Statement
Supporting Your Thesis
ACTIVITY Organizing a Rhetorical Analysis Essay
     Writing Topic Sentences
ACTIVITY Writing Topic Sentences
     Using Quotations as Evidence
     Documenting Sources
ACTIVITY Writing a Body Paragraph
Revising a Rhetorical Analysis Essay
ACTIVITY Revising a Paragraph
Analyzing a Sample Rhetorical Analysis Essay
     Joseph Barrett, "People and Peace, Not Profits and War"
ACTIVITY Providing Peer Feedback for Revision
CULMINATING ACTIVITY Crafting a Rhetorical Analysis Essay
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Order of the Day

2 Evidence-Based Arguments
What Is Argument?

Understanding Claims
ACTIVITY Identifying Arguable Claims
Types of Claims
     Claims of Fact
     ACTIVITY Making Claims of Fact
     Claims of Value
     ACTIVITY Making Claims of Value
     Claims of Policy
     ACTIVITY Making Claims of Policy

Understanding and Analyzing Evidence
Types of Evidence
     Personal Experience
     Anecdotes
     ACTIVITY Using Personal Experience and Anecdotes as Evidence
     Current Events
     Historical Information
     ACTIVITY Using Current Events and Historical Information as Evidence
     Expert Opinion
     Quantitative Evidence
ACTIVITY Analyzing Evidence
Florence Kelley, Speech on Child Labor

Logical Reasoning and Organization: Shaping an Argument
Induction
Deduction
ACTIVITY Using Inductive and Deductive Reasoning
Logical Fallacies
     Red Herrings and Ad Hominem Fallacies
     Faulty Analogies
     Straw Man Fallacies
     Either/Or Fallacies
     Hasty Generalization
     Circular Reasoning
     Post Hoc Fallacies
     Appeal to False Authority
     Bandwagon Appeal
ACTIVITY Identifying Logical Fallacies
Analyzing Visual Texts | Identifying Fallacies in Visual Texts
PETA, Feeding Kids Meat Is Child Abuse (advertisement)
Heap Analytics, Same Data, Different Y-Axis (graphs)
ACTIVITY Identifying Fallacies in Visual Texts
Omega Watch, George Clooney’s Choice (advertisement)
U.S. Department of Education, High School Graduation Rate (graph)
Patterns of Development
     Narration
     Judith Ortiz Cofer, from The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria
     Description
     Theodore Dreiser, from A Certain Oil Refinery
     Process Analysis
     E. B. White, from Farewell, My Lovely!
     Exemplification
     Sarah Grimké, from Letter on the Equality of the Sexes
     Comparison and Contrast
     Eleanor Roosevelt, from Women Must Learn to Play the Game as Men Do
     Definition
     Barack Obama, from 2004Democratic National Convention Speech
     Cause and Effect
     Robert F. Kennedy, from The Mindless Menace of Violence
ACTIVITY Analyzing Patterns of Development

Working with Sources to Build an Argument
Approaching Sources
ACTIVITY Approaching Sources
Examining Sources
ACTIVITY Examining Sources
Synthesizing Sources

From Reading to Writing: Crafting an Evidence-Based Essay
Conversation: Has Technology Changed the Way We Think?
     Jacqueline Howard, This Is How the Internet Is Rewiring Your Brain
     ACTIVITY Summarizing a Source
     Americans’ Cell Phone Use during Social Activity (graph)
     ACTIVITY Analyzing Quantitative Evidence
     Nicholas Carr, The Illusion of Knowledge
     ACTIVITY The "Yes, But" Game: Conceding and Refuting
     Sherry Turkle, from Stop Googling. Let’s Talk.
     ACTIVITY Comparing and Contrasting Sources
     Alison Gopnik, Is "Screen Time" Dangerous for Children?
     ACTIVITY Playing the Believing Game
     Osmani Simanca, Technology Shackle (cartoon)
     ACTIVITY Using Visual Texts as Evidence
Preparing to Write: Identifying Key Issues
ACTIVITY Formulating Your Position
Developing a Thesis Statement
Supporting Your Thesis
     Introducing Your Argument
     Acknowledging the Counterargument
     Supporting Your Argument with Evidence
     Citing Sources
ACTIVITY: Writing a Body Paragraph
Revising an Evidence-Based Argument Essay
ACTIVITY Revising a Paragraph
Analyzing a Sample Evidence-Based Argument Essay
     Christopher Rowley, "Has Technology Changed the Way We Think?"
ACTIVITY Providing Peer Feedback for Revision
CULMINATING ACTIVITY Crafting an Evidence-Based Argument Essay Conversation| The First Amendment: How Free Is Free Speech?

Thane Rosenbaum, Should Neo-Nazis Be Allowed Free Speech?

Lata Nott, Free Speech Isn’t Always Valuable. That’s Not the Point.

Laura Beth Nielsen, The Case for Restricting Hate Speech

Signe Wilkinson, Free Speech (cartoon)

Jacob Mchangama, The U.N. Hates Hate Speech More Than It Loves Free Speech

College Students’ Views on Whether Hate Speech Should Be Protected By the First Amendment (graph)

3 Analyzing Fiction

The Big Picture: Analyzing Major Elements of Fiction
Alice Walker, The Flowers
Plot
ACTIVITY Analyzing Plot
Character
Developing Character
ACTIVITY Analyzing Character
Setting
Khaled Hosseini, from A Thousand Splendid Suns
ACTIVITY Analyzing Setting
Point of View
N. K. Jemisin, from The Fifth Season
Amy Tan, from The Joy Luck Club
Jhumpa Lahiri, from The Namesake
Toni Morrison, from Sula
ACTIVITY Analyzing Point of View

Symbol and Allegory
Norman Maclean, from A River Runs Through It
ACTIVITY Analyzing Symbol and Allegory
Theme
ACTIVITY Putting It All Together: Analyzing Theme
Ernest Hemingway, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

Close Reading: Analyzing Passages of Fiction
Talking with the Text
ACTIVITY Talking with the Text
Denis Johnson, from Tree of Smoke
Literary Elements
Zora Neale Hurston, from Sweat
     Diction
     Figurative Language
     Imagery
     ACTIVITY Analyzing Language Choices
     Dana Czapnik, from The Falconer
     Syntax
     ACTIVITY Analyzing Syntax
     De’Shawn Charles Winslow, from In West Mills
     Tone and Mood
     ACTIVITY Connecting Style with Tone and Mood
     Robert Penn Warren, from All the Kings’ Men

From Reading to Writing: Crafting a Close Analysis of Fiction
Herman Melville, from Moby Dick

Preparing to Write: Annotating Fiction
ACTIVITY Annotating an Excerpt
Developing a Thesis Statement
Supporting Your Thesis
     Writing Topic Sentences
     Integrating Quotations
ACTIVITY Writing a Body Paragraph
Revising a Fiction Analysis Essay
ACTIVITY Revising a Paragraph
Analyzing a Sample Fiction Analysis Essay
     Ashley Cammiso, "Moby Dick"
ACTIVITY Providing Peer Feedback for Revision
CULMINATING ACTIVITY: Crafting a Fiction Analysis Essay
Ernest Hemingway, from A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

4 Analyzing Poetry

Step 1: Reading for Literal Meaning
Robert Frost, Out, Out—
ACTIVITY Reading a Poem for Literal Meaning
Billy Collins, The Blues

Step 2: Considering the Speaker
     Diction
     Shifts
     Tone and MoodACTIVITY Considering the Speaker
     E. A. Robinson, Richard Cory

Step 3: Reading for Detail
Edna St. Vincent Millay, Recuerdo
     Figurative Language
     ImageryACTIVITY Connecting Figurative Language and Imagery to Meaning
     Joy Harjo, For Keeps
     Structure
     Poetic Syntax
     Meter
     Form
ACTIVITY Connecting Form to Meaning
Countee Cullen, Yet Do I Marvel
     Sound
     Rhyme
ACTIVITY Connecting Sound to Meaning
Natasha Trethewey, Providence

From Analysis to Essay: Crafting a Poetry Analysis Essay
Stephen Dunn, The Sacred
     Preparing to Write: Annotating a Poem
     ACTIVITY Annotating a Poem
     Denise Levertov, The Secret
Developing a Thesis Statement
Supporting Your Thesis
     Writing Topic Sentences
     Integrating Quotations
     Documenting Sources
     ACTIVITY Writing a Body Paragraph
Revising a Poetry Analysis Essay
     ACTIVITY Revising a Paragraph
Analyzing a Sample Poetry Analysis Essay
     Lily Krakoff, "The Sacred"
ACTIVITY Providing Peer Feedback for Revision
CULMINATING ACTIVITY Crafting a Poetry Analysis Essay
Denise Levertov, The Secret

5 Redefining America
2001 to the Present

Barbara Ehrenreich, from Serving in Florida (nonfiction, 2001)
George W. Bush, Address to the Nation on September 11, 2001 (nonfiction)
TALKBACK | Omer Aziz, The World 9/11 Took from Us (nonfiction, 2019)
Barack Obama, 2004 Democratic National Convention Speech (nonfiction)
Brian Turner, At Lowe’s Home Improvement Center (poetry, 2010)
TALKBACK | Ilya Kaminsky, In a Time of Peace (poetry, 2019)
Viet Thanh Nguyen, Fatherland (fiction, 2011)
Natalie Diaz, Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation (poetry, 2012)
Roxane Gay, from Bad Feminist: Take Two (nonfiction , 2014)
Ross Gay, A Small Needful Fact (poetry, 2015)
Kathryn Schulz, from Citizen Khan (nonfiction, 2016)
Ted Closson, A GoFundMe Campaign Is Not Health Insurance (graphic essay, 2017)
Bryan Stevenson, A Presumption of Guilt (nonfiction, 2017)
Tracy K. Smith, Refuge (poetry, 2018)
Jesmyn Ward, My True South: Why I Decided to Return Home (nonfiction, 2018)
Amy Sherald, First Lady Michelle Obama (painting, 2018)
Kehinde Wiley, President Barack Obama (painting, 2018)
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Friday Black (fiction, 2018)
José Olivarez, My Family Never Finished Migrating We Just Stopped (poetry, 2019)
Louise Erdrich, The Stone (fiction, 2019)
Bill McKibben, 2050: How Earth Survived (nonfiction, 2019)

CONVERSATION | A Nation of Immigrants: What Is the American Dream?

Joshua Zeitz, The Real History of American Immigration (2017)

Khalil Bendib, Help Wanted (cartoon, 2010)

Julia Preston, Newest Immigrants Assimilating as Fast as Previous Ones, Report Says (2015

Amanda Machado, from My Immigrant Family Achieved the American Dream. Then I Started to Question It. (2017)

Andrew Lam, Is America Still a Nation of Immigrants? (2001/2017)

Views on Immigration to the United States of America, 1994–2019 (graphs, 2019)

Austan Goolsbee, Sharp Cuts in Immigration Threaten U.S. Economy and Innovation (2019)

Grammar as Rhetoric and Style | Short Simple Sentences and Fragments
Suggestions for Writing | Redefining America

6 A Meeting of Old and New Worlds
Beginnings to 1830

American Indian Trickster Stories (fiction)
Iroquois Confederacy, from The Iroquois Constitution (nonfiction, c. 1142)
Christopher Columbus, from Journal of the First Voyage to America (nonfiction, 1492)
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, from The Relation of Cabeza de Vaca (nonfiction, 1542)
Richard Frethorne, Letter to Father and Mother (nonfiction, 1623)
John Winthrop, from A Modell of Christian Charity (nonfiction, 1630)
Anne Bradstreet, The Author to Her Book (poetry, 1678)
Cotton Mather, Wonders of the Invisible World: A Hortatory and Necessary Address to a Country Now Extraordinarily Alarum’d by the Wrath of the Devil (nonfiction, 1693)
Jonathan Edwards, from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (nonfiction, 1741)
Benjamin Franklin, The Speech of Miss Polly Baker (nonfiction, 1747)
Phillis Wheatley, On Being Brought from Africa to America (poetry, 1773)
     To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works (poetry, 1773)
     To His Excellency General Washington (poetry, 1776)
     TALKBACK | June Jordan, from The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America: Or Something like a Sonnet for Phillis Wheatley (nonfiction, 2002)
Patrick Henry, Speech to the Second Virginia Convention (nonfiction, 1775)
Thomas Paine, from Common Sense (nonfiction, 1776)
Abigail and John Adams, Letters (nonfiction, 1776)
Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence (nonfiction, 1776)
Philip Freneau, To Sir Toby, A Sugar Planter in the Interior Parts of Jamaica, Near the City of San Jago de la Vega (Spanish Town), 1784 (poetry, 1784/1792)
Alexander Hamilton, from The Federalist No. 1 (nonfiction, 1787)
Preamble to the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights (nonfiction, 1789)
Judith Sargent Murray, from On the Equality of the Sexes (nonfiction, 1790)
     TALKBACK | H. L. Mencken, from In Defense of Women (nonfiction, 1918)
George Washington and Moses Seixas, Letters on Religious Tolerance (nonfiction, 1790)
Benjamin Banneker, Letter to Thomas Jefferson with Response from Thomas Jefferson (nonfiction, 1791)
Absalom Jones , Petition of the People of Colour, Freemen, within the City and Suburbs of Philadelphia (nonfiction, 1799)
Red Jacket, Defense of American Indian Religion (nonfiction, 1805)
Francis Scott Key, The Star-Spangled Banner (poetry, 1814)
     TALKBACK | Ada Limón, A New National Anthem (poetry, 2018)
Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle (fiction, 1820)
Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, The Forsaken Brother (fiction, 1827)
Edward Hicks, The Peaceable Kingdom (painting, 1833)

Conversation | The Second Amendment: What Does It Mean Today?

Akhil Reed Amar, from Second Thoughts: What the Right to Bear Arms Really Means (1999

Thomas Sowell, Do Gun-Control Laws Control Guns? (2013)

Pew Research Center, Some Agreement and Many Divisions between Owners and Non-Owners on Gun Proposals (graph, 2017)

Leah Libresco, I Used to Think Gun Control Was the Answer. My Research Told Me Otherwise. (2017)

Bret Stephens, Repeal the Second Amendment (2017)

Sarah Morris | If I’m Killed by an AR-15 — Forget Burial — Just Drop My Body on the Steps of the N.R.A. (photograph, 2018)

Nicholas Kristof, How to Win an Argument about Guns (2018)

Grammar as Rhetoric and Style | Subordination in Complex Sentences
Suggestions for Writing | A Meeting of Old and New Worlds

7 America in Conflict
1830–1865

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Minister’s Black Veil (fiction, 1832)
John Ross and Elias Boudinot, Response to the Treaty of New Echota (nonfiction, 1836)
Sarah Grimké, from Letter on the Condition of Women in the United States (nonfiction, 1838)
Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher (fiction, 1839)
Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Self-Reliance (nonfiction, 1841)
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments (nonfiction, 1848)
Sojourner Truth, Ain’t I a Woman? (nonfiction, 1851)
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Preface to Uncle Tom’s Cabin (nonfiction, 1852)
Frederick Douglass, from What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July? (nonfiction, 1852)
Go Down Moses (poetry, c. 1852/1861)
Henry David Thoreau, Where I Lived, and What I Lived For (nonfiction, 1854)
     TALKBACK | Kathryn Schulz, from Pond Scum (nonfiction, 2015)
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Bury Me in a Free Land (poetry, 1858)
John Brown, Last Speech (nonfiction, 1859)
Walt Whitman, I Hear America Singing (poetry, 1860)
     TALKBACK | Langston Hughes, I, Too (poetry, 1926)
O Captain! My Captain! (poetry, 1865)
Harriet Jacobs, from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself (nonfiction, 1861)
Alfred M. Green, Let Us Take Up the Sword (nonfiction, 1861)
Emily Dickinson, "Hope" is the thing with feathers — (poetry, c. 1861)
I heard a Fly buzz — when I died — (poetry, c. 1862)
My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun — (poetry, c. 1863)
     TALKBACK | Hans Ostrom, Emily Dickinson and Elvis Presley in Heaven (poetry, 2006)
Herman Melville, Shiloh: A Requiem (April, 1862) (poetry)
Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address (nonfiction, 1865)
Mathew Brady Photography Studio, Civil War Photography (visual essay, 1861–1865)

Conversation | Reparations: How Do We Address the Legacy of Slavery in America?

Erik K. Yamamoto, from Racial Reparations: Japanese American Redress and African American Claims (1998

Khalil Bendib, Apology, Hold the Reparations (cartoon, 2009)

Americans’ Views on Reparations (graph, 2016)

Robert L. Woodson, Embracing Reparations Debases Blacks, Raises Troubling Questions (2019)

Ta-Nehisi Coates, Congressional Testimony on Reparations (2019)

Charles M. Blow, from Reparations: Reasonable and Right (2019)

Charles Lane, Would Reparations for Slavery Be Constitutional? (2019)

Jonathan Capehart, No Reparations Check of Any Amount Could Substitute for an Apology (2019)

Grammar as Rhetoric and Style | Cumulative, Periodic, and Inverted Sentences
Suggestions for Writing | America in Conflict

8 Reconstructing America
1865–1913

Jourdon Anderson, To My Old Master (nonfiction, 1865)
Winslow Homer, The Veteran in a New Field (painting, 1865)
     TALKBACK | Natasha Trethewey, Again, the Fields (poetry, 2006)
Red Cloud, Speech on Indian Rights (nonfiction, 1870)
Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, Life among the Paiutes (nonfiction, 1882)
Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus (poetry, 1883)
Mark Twain, from Life on the Mississippi (nonfiction, 1883)
Jacob Riis, The Mixed Crowd (nonfiction, 1890)
Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (fiction, 1890)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper (fiction, 1892)
     TALKBACK | Kehinde Wiley, Portrait of a Lady (painting, 2013)
Ida B. Wells-Barnett, from Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases (nonfiction, 1892)
Frederick Jackson Turner, from The Significance of the Frontier in American History (nonfiction,1893/1920)
Booker T. Washington, The Atlanta Exposition Address (nonfiction, 1895)
Paul Laurence Dunbar, We Wear the Mask (poetry, 1896)
Jane Addams, from The Subtle Problem of Charity (nonfiction, 1899)
Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life (nonfiction, 1899)
James Weldon Johnson, Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing (poetry, 1900)
     TALKBACK | Augusta Savage, The Harp, or "Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing" (sculpture, 1939)
Andy Adams, from The Log of a Cowboy (fiction, 1903)
W.E.B. DuBois, The Talented Tenth (nonfiction, 1903)
Willa Cather, The Sculptor’s Funeral (fiction, 1905)
     TALKBACK | Kim Stafford, Willa Cather’s Ride (poetry, 2019)
E. A. Robinson, Miniver Cheevy (poetry, 1910)
Sui Sin Far, Its Wavering Image (fiction, 1912)
Katharine Lee Bates, America the Beautiful (poetry, 1912)
     TALKBACK | Gregory Djanikian, In the Elementary School Choir (poetry, 1989)

Conversation | Income Inequality: Are We Living in a New Gilded Age?

Andrew Carnegie, from The Gospel of Wealth (1889)

Eugene V. Debs, from Capitalism Has Nearly Reached Its Climax (1902)

Occupy Wall Street (photograph, 2011)

John Divine, How to Solve Income Inequality (2017)

David R. Henderson, from Income Inequality Isn’t the Problem (2018)

Joseph Blasi and Maureen Conway, A Better Way to Share the Wealth (2018)

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Income Gains at the Top Dwarf Those of Low- and Middle-Income Households (graph, 2019)

Grammar as Rhetoric and Style | Modifiers
Suggestions for Writing | Reconstructing America

9 America in the Modern World
1913–1945

María Cristina Mena, The Vine-Leaf (fiction, 1914)
Carrie Chapman Catt, Women’s Suffrage Is Inevitable (nonfiction, 1917)
Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (poetry, 1917)
Edna St. Vincent Millay, First Fig (poetry, 1918)
Marianne Moore, Poetry (poetry, 1919)
Claude McKay, If We Must Die (poetry, 1919)
Theodore Dreiser, A Certain Oil Refinery (nonfiction, 1919)
Emma Goldman, Deportation Hearing Statement (nonfiction, 1919)
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Bernice Bobs Her Hair (fiction, 1920)
E. E. Cummings, in Just- (poetry, 1920)
Robert Frost, Fire and Ice (poetry, 1920)
William Carlos Williams, The Great Figure (poetry, 1921)
     TALKBACK | Charles Demuth, I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (painting, 1928)
     This Is Just to Say (poetry, 1934)
Langston Hughes, The Negro Speaks of Rivers (poetry, 1921)
Zora Neale Hurston, Drenched in Light (fiction, 1924)
Zora Neale Hurston, How It Feels to Be Colored Me (nonfiction, 1928)
     TALKBACK | Eve Ewing, What I mean when I say I’m sharpening my oyster knife (poetry, 2018)
Countee Cullen, Yet Do I Marvel (poetry, 1925)
T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men (poetry, 1925)
Eleanor Roosevelt, Women Must Learn to Play the Game as Men Do (nonfiction, 1928)
     TALKBACK | Rebecca Solnit, If I Were a Man (nonfiction, 2017)
E. B. White, Farewell, My Lovely! (nonfiction, 1936)
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Second Inaugural Address: One-Third of a Nation (nonfiction, 1937)
Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish (poetry, 1938)
W. H. Auden, The Unknown Citizen (poetry, 1939)
Farm Security Administration and the Works Progress Administration Photographers, The Great Depression (visual essay, 1930–1942)
Gordon Hirabayashi, from Diary in King County Jail (nonfiction, 1942)

Conversation | Women in the Workforce: Breaking the Glass Ceiling or Falling Off a Glass Cliff?

Emma Goldberg, Why the Gender Pay Gap Persists (and What We Can Do about It) (2019)

Alfred T. Palmer, Operating a Hand Drill at Vultee-Nashville, Woman Is Working on a "Vengeance" Dive Bomber (photograph, 1943)

David Rock and Heidi Grant, Why Diverse Teams Are Smarter (2016)

Median Annual Earnings and Gender Earnings Ratio for Full-Time, Year-Round Workers Age 15 Years and Older by Race/Ethnicity, 2017–2018 (graph)

Anita Hill, Class Actions Could Fight Discrimination in Tech (2017)

Claire Cain Miller, from Women Did Everything Right. Then Work Got "Greedy." (2019)

Ruth Whippman, Enough Leaning In. Let’s Tell Men to Lean Out. (2019)

Garry Wills, from My Education in the Patriarchy (2019)

Grammar as Rhetoric and Style | Direct, Precise, and Active Verbs
Suggestions for Writing | America in the Modern World

10 The Rise of a Superpower
1945 to the Present

Harry S. Truman, Statement by the President of the United States (nonfiction, 1945)
Lillian Hellman, I Cannot and Will Not Cut My Conscience to Fit This Year’s Fashions (nonfiction, 1952)
Flannery O’Connor, Good Country People (fiction, 1955)
James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (nonfiction, 1955)
Allen Ginsberg, A Supermarket in California (poetry, 1955)
Philip Roth, The Conversion of the Jews (fiction, 1959)
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address (nonfiction, 1961)
Joan Didion, On Self-Respect (nonfiction, 1961)
Sylvia Plath, Mirror (poetry, 1961)
John F. Kennedy, Cuban Missile Crisis Speech (nonfiction, 1962)
     TALKBACK | Nikita Khrushchev, Letter to John F. Kennedy (nonfiction, 1962)
Rachel Carson, from Silent Spring (nonfiction, 1962)
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail (nonfiction, 1963)
     TALKBACK | Malcolm Gladwell, Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted (nonfiction, 2010)
Robert F. Kennedy, The Mindless Menace of Violence (nonfiction, 1968)
Toni Cade Bambara, Raymond’s Run (fiction, 1971)
Adrienne Rich, Diving into the Wreck (poetry, 1973)
Leslie Marmon Silko, Yellow Woman (fiction, 1974)
Naomi Shihab Nye, Arabic Coffee (poetry, 1986)
Brent Staples, Just Walk On By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space (nonfiction, 1986)
Yusef Komunyakaa, Facing It (poetry, 1988)
     TALKBACK | Ocean Vuong, Aubade with Burning City (poetry, 2014)
Tim O’Brien, On the Rainy River (fiction, 1990)
Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named María (nonfiction, 1992)
Toni Morrison, Nobel Lecture (nonfiction, 1993)
Kerry James Marshall, Our Town (painting, 1995)
Rita Dove, Rosa (poetry, 1998)