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List of contents
1. Writing (and Reading) Like a Writer: So What and the Seven Common Moves.
2. Things That Mean: The Nature of Description.
Ernie Pyle, “Normandy Beachhead”. Annie Dilliard, “Catch It If You Can”. David Foster Wallace, “Clog Dancing at the Illinois State Fair”. Donna Tartt, “Team Spirit”.
3. Interpreting Events: The Nature of Narrative.
Mike Royko, “Jackie's Debut”. Langston Hughes, “Salvation”. Jaime O'Neill, “Falling into Place”. Annie Dilliard, “The Chase”.
4. Interpreting a Process: How Things Are Done.
Merrill Markoe, “Showering with Your Dog”. Kurt Vonnegut, “How to Write with Style”. Judith Herbst, “The Body Shop”. Jessica Mitford, “The American Way of Death”.
5. Significant Differences: Comparison/Contrast.
Marie Winn, “Something Has Happened”. Marie Sadker and David Sadker, “Help Me, God I'm a Girl”. Amy Tan, “Mother Tongue”. Bruce Catton, “Grant and Lee: A Study in Contrasts”.
6. Division and Classification: A Pair of Two-Steps.
Marion Winik, “What Are Friends For?”. Jerry Dennis, “The Sphere of Air”. Scott Russell Sanders, “The Men We Carry in Our Minds”. Deborah Tannen, “But What Do You Mean?”.
7. Probable Causes (and Likely Effects).
Joan Jacobs Brumberg, “The Origins of Anorexia Nervosa”. Wilbert Rideau, “Why Prison's Don't Work”. Peter Farb, “In Other Words”. E.M. Forster, “My Wood”.
8. Definitions with Attitude: When Webster's Not Enough.
Richard Stengel, “Space Invaders”. Joan Didion, “On Self-Respect”. James Baldwin, “If Black English Isn't a Language, the Tell Me, What Is?”. Gloria Naylor, “The Meaning of a Word”.
9. Exemplifications: Paradigms and Likely Stories.
Brent Staples, “Just Walk on By”. Val Schaffner, “Virus Zero”. Marion Winik, “Things Don't Just Disappear”. Joyce Carol Oates, “On Boxing and Pain”.
10. Argument, Persuasion, and Conflict Resolution: Making Belief and Making Up.
José Antonio Burciaga, “Weedee Peepo”. Barbara Ehrenreich, “In Defense of Splitting Up”. Michael Dorris, “Crazy Horse Malt Liquor”. Alice Walker, “Am I Blue?”.
11. Reflections on the Essay: Five Classic Examples.
Michael Eyquem de Montaigne, “By Diverse Means We Arrive at the Same End”. Jonathan Swift, “A Modest Proposal”. Virginia Woolf, “The Death of the Moth”. E.B. White, “Once More to the Lake”. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “I Have a Dream”.
12. Sentence Exercises.
13. Additional Ideas for Writing.
Index.
Summary
Designed for freshman Composition courses, this reader identifies and examines the various rhetorical skills employed by writers. It provides models of rhetorical categories and trains students to emulate accomplished writers.
