This highly regarded, thematic reader for freshman composition offers students an introduction to issues in the arts and sciences. It includes a good balance of classic and contemporary selections from mixed genres and provides a wide range of viewpoints and voices. The readings are supported by introductions to each theme and individual headnotes.

1. On Writing.

Anais Nin, from The Personal Life Deeply Lived.

William Stafford, A Way of Writing. Lawrence Langer, The Human Use of Language.

Josephine Miles, Essay in Reason.

William Zinsser, Simplicity.

2. Thinking about Thinking.

William Golding, Thinking as a Hobby.

James Harvey Robinson, On Various Kinds of Thinking.

Robert Grudin, Ideology and Moral Philology.

Samuel H. Scudder, In the Laboratory with Agassiz.

Thomas H. Huxley, The Method of Scientific Investigation.

Theodore Roszak, Ideas Come First.

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Concepts We Live By.

Mary E. Clark, Science and Values.

Aldous Huxley, Propaganda under a Dictatorship.

3. On the Need for Feeling.

Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal.

Robertson Davies, The Deadliest of Sins.

Annie Dillard, Living Like Weasels.

Susanne K. Langer, The Cultural Importance of Art.

William Wordsworth, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud (poem).

Louise Bogan, The Dream (poem).

e. e. cummings, since feeling is first (poem).

Imamu Amiri Baraka, Young Soul (poem).

4. Language As Power.

Susanne K. Langer, The Prince of Creation.

Robin Lakoff, from Talking Power: The Two Faces of Language.

Everybody Is a Politician.

Robin Lakoff, You Are What You Say.

Audre Lorde, Transformation of Silence into Language and Action.

Paule Marshall, From the Poets in the Kitchen.

Santha Rama Rau, By Any Other Name.

Haig A. Bosmajian, the Language of Oppression.

George Orwell, Politics and the English Language.

5. What Should Students Learn?

Theodore R. Sizer, What High School Is.

Mike Rose, from Lives on the Boundary: Jack MacFarland, Our Lady of Mercy High School.

Frank Carothers and Ted Erlandson, Loyola University.

"Suddenly I Felt Strange" Otto Friedrich, Five Ways to Wisdom.

Theodore Roszak, The Master Ideas.

Thomas J. Cottle, Overcoming an Invisible Handicap.

Robert B. Reich, The Future of Work.

6. The Problem of Identity.

Jennifer Crichton, Who Shall I Be?

Ellen Goodman, A Working Community.

Zora Neale Hurston, How It Feels to Be Colored Me.

Sucheng Chan, You're Short, Besides!

James Thurber, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (story).

William Kilpatrick, Identity in a Temporary Society.

Joan Didion, Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream.

Gwendolyn Brooks, A Song in the Front Yard (poem).

W. H. Auden, The Unknown Citizen (poem).

7. Crossing Cultures.

Eva Hoffman, from Lost in Translation.

Ben H. Bagdikian, The Black Immigrants.

Vicki L. Ruiz, Oral History and La Mujer: The Rosa Guerrero Story.

Marilyn P. Davis, Padre Luis Olivares.

Michael Novak, Neither WASP nor Jew nor Black.

Frank H. Wu, Thinking about Diversity.

Melanie Schellar, On the Meaning of Plumbing and Poverty.

Mark Salzman, Learn Calligraphy.

8. The "American Dilemma".

Gordon Allport, Prejudice and the Individual.

Langston Hughes, Dream Deferred (poem).

James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son.

Brent Staples, Just Walk on By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space.

Toni Morrison, A Slow Walk of Trees (as Grandmother Would Say), Hopeless (as Grandfather Would Say).

August Wilson, I Want a Black Director.

Shelby Steele, Race-Holding.

9. Barriers to Women, Visible and Invisible.

New York Herald, The Woman's Rights Convention (September 12, 1852).

Virginia Woolf, Two

Essays on Women: Professions for Women; Shakespeare's Sister.

Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens.

Stephen Jay Gould, Women's Brains.

Matina Horner, Fail: Bright Women.

Judy Brady [Judy Syfers], I Want a Wife.

Anthony Burgess, Grunts from a Sexist Pig.

Louis Bogan, Women (poem).

Marge Piercy, The Woman in the Ordinary (poem).

10. On Being a Man.

Mark Gerzon, from "Introduction" to a Choice of Heroes.

Marc Feigen Fasteau, Friendships among Men.

Paul Theroux, Being a Man.

Scott Sanders, The Men We Carry in Our Minds.

Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays (poem).

11. What Should Work Be?

James Herriot, from All Things Bright and Beautiful.

Gary Soto, Black Hair.

Studs Terkel, from Working: Carl Murray Bates, Mason. Mike Lefevre, Steelworker.

Nora Watson, Editor.

Barbara Terwilliger.

John C. Raines, Capital, Community, and the Meaning of Work.

Erich Fromm, Work in an Alienated Society.

Samuel C. Florman, On-the -Job Enrichment.

Marge Piercy, To Be of Use (poem).

12. What Is Democracy?

John Stuart Mill, from On Liberty.

Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence.

The First Congress of the United States, The Bill of Rights.

Margaret Mead, The Egalitarian Error.

13. Issues in Democracy.

Frances Moore Lappe, Freedom From and Freedom To.

Judith Martin and Gunther Stent, Attack Ideas, Not People.

Walter Lippmann, The Indispensable Opposition.

Thomas S. Szasz, Drug Prohibition.

Amitai Etzioni, When Rights Collide.

14. On the Future of Democratic Capitalism.

L. S. Stavrianos, A New Axial Age.

Milton Friedman and Rose D. Friedman, the Relation between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom.

Frances Moore Lappe, Freedom, Human Nature, and Hope.

Henry Mintzberg, A Note on That Dirty Word "Efficiency".

Vaclav Havel, from Disturbing the Peace.

15. On Conscience a

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