The Short Prose Reader

by Muller, Gilbert H.; Wiener, Harvey S.

• ISBN13: 9780072495546
• ISBN10: 0072495545
• Edition: 10th
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-08-05
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages

Summary

This rhetorically organized, student-friendly reader includes short essays on a range of topics. Each selection is supported by exceptionally thorough and thoughtfully designed editorial apparatus that integrates reading, writing, and critical thinking. The quality, variety, and number of reading, writing, and thinking prompts provide students with ample support for reading and writing and can be adapted to a number of teaching approaches.

Table of Contents

* indicates a selection new to this edition

Chapter 1: On Writing

*Russell Baker: On Becoming a Writer

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: How to Write with Style

Amy Tan: Mother Tongue

William Zinsser: Simplicity

Chapter 2: On Reading

Eudora Welty: One Writer’s Beginnings

*Judith Ortiz Cofer: Volar

Malcolm X: Prison Studies

Ellen Tashie Frisina: “See Spot Run”: Teaching My Grandmother to Read

Chapter 3: Description

*Annie Dillard: In the Jungle

Maxine Hong Kingston: Catfish in the Bathtub

Richard Selzer: The Discus Thrower

Virginia Woolf: The Death of the Moth

Chapter 4: Narration

Elizabeth Wong: The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl

Langston Hughes: Salvation

George Orwell: A Hanging

Grace Paley: Travelling

Chapter 5: Illustration

Brent Staples: Night Walker

Barbara Ehrenreich: What I’ve Learned from Men

*Amarty Sen: A World Not Neatly Divided

Lewis Thomas: Death in the Open

Chapter 6: Comparison and Contrast

Rachel Carson: A Fable for Tomorrow

*Katha Pollitt: Why Boys Don’t Play with Dolls

Ellen Goodman: The Tapestry of Friendships

Michele Ingrassia: The Body of the Beholder

Chapter 7: Definition

Janice Castro with Dan Cook and Christina Garcia: Spanglish

Suzanne Britt Jordan: Fun, Oh Boy, Fun. You Could Die from It

Gloria Naylor: A Word’s Meaning

*David Brooks: The Organization Kid

Chapter 8: Classification

Judith Viorst: Friends, Good Friends - and Such Good Friends

E.B. White: The Three New Yorks

James T. Baker: How Do We Find the Student in a World of Academic Gymnasts and Worker Ants?

*Amy Rashap: The American Dream for Sale

Chapter 9: Process Analysis

Jerrold G. Simon: How to Write a Resume

*John Lantos: Life and Death in the Neonatal Intensive Care

Ernest Hemingway: Camping Out

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.: In the Kitchen

Chapter 10: Cause-and-Effect Analysis

Stephen King: Why We Crave Horror Movies

Anne Roiphe: Why Marriages Fail

*Harry Crews: Why I Live Where I Live

Susan Jacoby: When Bright Girls Decide That Math Is “a Waste of Time”

Chapter 11: Argumentation and Persuasion

Reparations for Slavery: Pro and Con

*Manning Marable: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

*Shelby Steele: A Childish Illusion of Justice

The Death Penalty: Pro and Con

*Bob Herbert: Death-Penalty Dissenters

*James Q. Wilson: What Death-Penalty Errors?

Issues of Identity

Judy Brady: I Want a Wife

Jonathan Kozol: Are the Homeless Crazy?

*Robert L. Spitzer: Psychiatry and Homosexuality

*Ronald Takaki: The Harmful Myth of Asian Superiority

Anna Quindlen: Women Are Just Better

Issues of Political Rights

Molly Ivins: Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of Guns

*Julie Bosman: The (No) Free Speech Movement

Martin Luther King, Jr.: I Have a Dream