This volume exposes beginning students to some of the best voices from modern intellectual life with a collection of beautifully crafted essays from across the disciplines. The intro. features an essay, "Why We Write," in which Hampl reflects on her own writing process, showing students that even accomplished writers face many of the same challenges that student writers encounter in college assignments. The selections are arranged by topic: values and beliefs; cultures in collision and contact; race and racism; the experience of women; interpreting the body; violence and war; life and death; observing animals; understanding the physical world; human portraits; teaching, learning, and schooling; health, disease, and medicine; and interpreting the past.

Preface	p. v
Thematic Contents	p. xvii
For Students	p. xxv
Introduction	p. 1
From Reading to Writing	p. 1
Writing as Conversation	p. 2
Modes of Writing and Thinking	p. 3
The Modes as a Continuum	p. 3
Reflecting	p. 4
Reporting	p. 8
Explaining	p. 15
Arguing	p. 23
Writing across the Curriculum	p. 31
Rereading and Rewriting	p. 33
Using and Acknowledging Sources	p. 35
Arts and Humanities
Reflecting in the Arts and Humanities	p. 43
Graduation	p. 43
Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self	p. 54
Mirrors	p. 62
Learning to Read and Write	p. 74
Mother Tongue	p. 80
Unspeakable Conversations	p. 86
The Work of Mourning	p. 104
Don Ysidro (fiction)	p. 113
Reporting in the Arts and Humanities	p. 117
At Home, at School, in Hiding	p. 117
A New Kind of War	p. 127
Hatsuyo Nakamura	p. 133
The Long Good-bye: Mother's Day in Federal Prison	p. 141
Teaching Literature at the County Jail	p. 150
Labor Day Hurricane, 1935 (fiction)	p. 158
Problems of Art (fiction)	p. 176
Explaining in the Arts and Humanities	p. 190
On Keeping a Notebook	p. 190
Memorywork (fiction)	p. 198
Urban Legends: "The Boyfriend's Death"	p. 209
What High School Is	p. 219
Your Face in Lights: The Secrets of Cinematography	p. 230
The Cave	p. 241
Blocked	p. 247
Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective	p. 260
Arguing in the Arts and Humanities	p. 268
Hiroshima	p. 268
If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?	p. 276
Politics and the English Language	p. 280
Why We Hate Teachers	p. 292
Watching TV Makes You Smarter	p. 301
Something Borrowed	p. 313
Social Sciences and Public Affairs
Reflecting in the Social Sciences and Public Affairs	p. 329
The Way to Rainy Mountain	p. 329
The Story of My Body	p. 336
Pilgrimage to Nonviolence	p. 346
Shooting an Elephant	p. 354
Tools of Torture: An Essay on Beauty and Pain	p. 361
What Did You Do in the War, Grandma? A Flashback to August 1945	p. 366
Reporting in the Social Sciences and Public Affairs	p. 375
"This Is the End of the World": The Black Death	p. 375
Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki Told by Flight Member	p. 387
First Observations	p. 395
The Nature Faker (fiction)	p. 405
U.S. Attacked: Hijacked Jets Destroy Twin Towers and Hit Pentagon in Day of Terror	p. 415
Edgy First College Assignment: Study the Koran	p. 424
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America	p. 429
Explaining in the Social Sciences and Public Affairs	p. 443
The Futile Pursuit of Happiness	p. 443
Some Conditions of Obedience and Disobedience to Authority	p. 453
On the Fear of Death	p. 479
Nonverbal Courtship Patterns in Women: Context and Consequences	p. 486
Zeno and the Distance between Us (fiction)	p. 504
Inside Dope	p. 511
The Naked Face	p. 519
I'm Right, You're Wrong, Go to Hell	p. 536
Arguing in the Social Sciences and Public Affairs	p. 545
A Modest Proposal	p. 545
The Declaration of Independence	p. 554
Letter from Birmingham Jail	p. 559
Sifting the Ashes	p. 574
Isn't Marriage for Procreation?	p. 588
Fools' Paradise	p. 596
Sciences and Technologies
Reflecting in the Sciences and Technologies	p. 605
A Mask on the Face of Death	p. 605
Close Encounter of the Human Kind	p. 616
Can We Know the Universe? Reflections on a Grain of Salt	p. 620
Memoria ex Machina	p. 626
Design	p. 632
Reporting in the Sciences and Technologies	p. 634
A Delicate Operation	p. 634
A Delicate Balance Is Undone in a Flash, and a Battered City Waits	p. 638
Joey: A "Mechanical Boy"	p. 657
Why McDonald's Fries Taste So Good	p. 669
Fun with Physics	p. 680
The Other Stem-Cell Debate	p. 692
Explaining in the Sciences and Technologies	p. 703
Why the Sky Is Blue	p. 703
Why Leaves Turn Color in the Fall	p. 706
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat	p. 711
Our Picture of the Universe	p. 724
Natural-Born Liars	p. 734
Life Is a Narrative	p. 746
Arguing in the Sciences and Technologies	p. 754
The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles	p. 754
Women's Brains	p. 771
A Designer Universe?	p. 778
Show Me the Science	p. 787
The Case against Perfection	p. 793
Acknowledgments	p. 810
Rhetorical Index	p. 815
Author and Title Index	p. 819
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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