Contents of essays by rhetorical mode -- Networking assignments -- pt. I. An overview of college writing -- 1. Reading and responding to texts in the 21st Century -- Reading critically and actively -- Responding to essays -- Thinking critically -- [from] Ancient Greece to Iraq, the power of words in wartime / Robin Tolmach Lakoff -- Judging honesty by words, not fidgets / Benedict Carey -- Engaging in critical reading -- How to mark a book / Mortimer J. Adler -- Annotating -- Taking notes -- Questioning the text -- The cult of ethnicity / Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. -- Message-making : an interactive approach -- Paraphrasing, summarizing -- Quoting -- Avoiding plagiarism -- Synthesizing : drawing connections from texts -- Case study for synthesis : classic and contemporary, the impulse to compose -- On keeping a private journal / Henry David Thoreau -- Writing is easy / Steve Martin -- Reading and responding to online texts -- Reading and analyzing visual texts -- Classic and contemporary images : how do we communicate? -- Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima / Joe Rosenthal -- Firefighters raising the flag at Ground Zero / Thomas E. Franklin -- 2. Writing : process and communication -- Composing in any medium : processes for writing -- Invention -- Considering purpose and audience -- Classic and contemporary images : how do we compose? -- Edith Wharton writing at her desk / Library of Congress -- Jennifer Jacobson and Jane Kurtz writing on laptops at a coffee shop / Photograph -- Choosing an appropriate tone -- Generating ideas : freewriting and brainstorming -- Outlining -- Drafting -- Thesis -- Introductory paragraphs -- Body paragraphs -- End paragraphs -- Cultist behavior or doltish behavior? / Jamie Taylor (student essay) -- Proofreading -- Responding to editorial comments -- A portfolio on writing and communication -- Leave your name at the Border / Manuel Muñoz -- Mother tongue / Amy Tan -- Freewriting / Peter Elbow -- The maker's eye : revising your own manuscripts / Donald M. Murray -- The blogs of war / John Hockenberry -- Sex, lies, and conversation : why is it so hard for men and women to talk to each other? / Deborah Tannen -- Politics and the English language / George Orwell -- Synthesis : connections for critical thinking --

3. Reading and writing effective arguments -- The language of argument -- Classic and contemporary images : what is an argument? -- The Third of May, 1808 / Francisco de Goya -- Police Chief Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes a Viet Cong officer / Eddie Adams -- The test of justification -- Reading and analyzing arguments -- Understanding claims and warrants -- Reasoning from evidence -- Thinking critically about arguments -- Purpose of argumentation -- Appeals to reason, emotion, and ethics -- The Gettysburg Address / Abraham Lincoln -- Writing powerful arguments -- Identify an issue -- Take a stand and clarify your claim -- Analyze your audience -- Tone -- Grounds for your claim -- Evidence -- Consider your warrants -- Opposing viewpoints -- Avoid unfair emotional appeals and errors in reasoning -- Argumentative synthesis -- Social networking : friend or foe? -- Do I really have to join Twitter? / Farhad Manjoo -- In defense of Twitter / Caroline McCarthy -- Social sites are becoming too much of a good thing / Ellen Lee -- Oh, what a tangled online dating web we weave / Ellen McCarthy -- Mirror, mirror on the Web / Lakshmi Chaudhry -- Synthesis : connections for argumentation -- 4. Writing a research project in the 21st Century -- Research writing : preconceptions and practice -- Navigating the research process -- Documenting sources -- MLA (Modern Language Association) documentation -- APA (American Psychological Association) documentation -- A research project casebook : working with sources across media -- Finding sources -- Evaluating sources -- Working with sources -- Printed -- Online Database -- Article accessed online -- Web site -- Visual media : film still -- Revising -- The courage of intimacy / Clara Lee (sample student paper : MLA style) --

pt. II. Issues across the disciplines -- 5. Education and society : how, what, and why do we learn? -- Classic and contemporary images : Does education change over time? -- Zoology lab, Oberlin College, 1890s -- Biology lab, University of Main, 1990s / Tom Stewart -- Classic and contemporary essays : what is the value of education? -- Learning to read and write / Frederick Douglass -- The lonely, good company of books / Richard Rodriguez -- The graduates / Louis Menand -- America, still on top / Vartan Gregorian -- Sex ed / Anna Quindlen -- Unplugged : the myth of computers in the classroom / David Gelernter -- When bright girls decide that math is "a waste of time" / Susan Jacoby -- Two cheers for Brown v. Board of Education / Clayborne Carson -- 6. Family life and gender roles : how do we become who we are? -- How do we respond to marriage? -- Rustic wedding / Pieter Brueghel -- Gay marriage / Elise Amendola -- How much to do families matter? -- Once more to the lake / E.B. White -- Stone soup / Barbara Kingsolver -- An American childhood / Annie Dillard -- Love, internet style / David Brooks -- Family values / Richard Rodriguez -- Once upon a quinceañera / Julia Alvarez -- The estrangement / Jamaica Kincaid -- Digital Scheherazades in the Arab world / Fatema Mernissi -- 7. History, culture, and civilization : are we citizens of the world? -- How do we become Americans? -- Medical exam of male immigrants, 1907 / National Park Service -- Illegal immigrants crossing the border between Guatemala and Mexico, 1999 / Associated Press -- Are we moving toward a world culture? -- Wrong ism / J.B. Priestley -- America : the multinational society / Ishmael Reed -- 1776 and all that : America after September 11 / Edward Hoagland -- The myth of the Latin woman : I just met a girl named Maria / Judith Ortiz Cofer -- We are the world / William Ecenbarger -- Yellow woman and a beauty of the spirit / Leslie Marmon Silko -- A world not neatly divided / Amartya Sen -- The Arab world / Edward T. Hall -- 8. Government, politics, and social justice : how do we decide what is fair? -- Have we made advances in Civil Rights? -- Slaves for sale / advertisement -- "Hope" : Obama election poster, 2008 / photograph -- What is the American dream? -- The Declaration of Independence / Thomas Jefferson -- I have a dream / Martin Luther King, Jr. -- We're all torturers now / Dalia Lithwick -- Is Texas America? / Molly Ivins -- Cyberspace : if you don't love it, leave it / Esther Dyson -- Obama vs. Marx / Alan Wolfe -- Grant and Lee : a study in contrasts / Brace Catton -- American dreamer / Bharati Mukherjee -- Stranger in the village / James Baldwin --

9. Business and economics : how do we earn our keep? -- Will workers be displaced by machines? -- [portion of] Mural from the Detroit Institute of Arts / Diego Rivera -- Automobile assembly line / photograph -- Does equal opportunity exist? -- Professions for women / Virginia Woolf -- Delusions of grandeur / Henry Louis Gates Jr. -- The death of Horatio Alger / Paul Krugman -- Tails of Manhattan / Woody Allen -- Globalization : the super-story / Thomas L. Friedman -- Nickel and dimed / Barbara Ehrenreich -- Why the rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer / Robert Reich -- A modest proposal / Jonathan Swift -- 10. Media and popular culture : what is the message? -- What do gangster films reveal about us? -- Little Caesar, 1930 / Edward G. Robinson -- The Sopranos, 2000 / James Gandolfini -- Why are we fascinated by bad men in popular culture? -- The gangster as tragic hero / Robert Warshow -- Why we love "Mad Men" / Lauren M.E. Goodlad -- Live Crew, decoded / Henry Louis Gates Jr. -- My creature from the Black Lagoon / Stephen King -- Red, white, and beer / Dave Berry -- Wonder woman / Gloria Steinem -- Supersaturation, or, the media torrent and disposable feeling / Todd Gitlin -- Escape from Wonderland : Disney and the female imagination / Deborah Ross -- 11. Literature and the Arts : why do they matter? -- How do we evaluate a work of Art? -- Walking man / Auguste Rodin -- Rabbit / Jeff Koons -- What is the value of literature? -- One writer's beginnings / Eudora Welty -- Superman and me / Sherman Alexie -- Moving along / John Updike -- Finding Neverland / David Gates -- George Orwell : some personal connections / Margaret Atwood -- Regarding the torture of others / Susan Sontag -- The Boston photographs / Nora Ephron -- Saving the life that is your own : the importance of models in the artist's life / Alice Walker -- 12. Philosophy, ethics, and religion : what do we believe? -- Do we believe in good and evil? -- Islamic Art from India / Angel and mortal -- St. Michael and the devil / Jacob Epstein -- Is superstition a form of belief? -- New superstitions for old / Margaret Mead -- Superstitious minds / Letty Cottin Pogrebin -- I listen to my parents and I wonder what they believe / Robert Coles -- Salvation / Langston Hughes -- What's God got to do with it? / Karen Armstrong -- Our mutual joy ? the religious case for gay marriage / Lisa Miller -- The allegory of the cave / Plato -- Not about Islam? / Salman Rushdie -- The rival conceptions of God / C.S. Lewis -- The culture of disbelief / Stephen L. Carter --

13. Health and medicine : what are the challenges?

What does medical research tell us?

The anatomy lesson / Rembrandt van Rijn

Conjoined twins / Associated Press

Can we avoid epidemics?

"This is the end of the world" : the Black Death / Barbara Tuchman

It's spreading / Jill Lepore

The Masked Marvel's last toehold

I worked hard for that furrowed brow / Ellen Goodman

Between a woman and her doctor / Martha Mendoza

The terrifying normalcy of AIDS / Stephen Jay Gould

Full moon Friday the Thirteenth / Atul Gawande

The globalization of eating disorders / Susan Bordo

14. Nature and environment : how do we relate to the natural world?

Are we destroying our natural world?

Along the Hudson / John Frederick Kensett

Los Angeles, 2004 / Damian Dovarganes

Do we own nature?

Letter to President Pierce, 1855 / Chief Seattle

Children in the woods / Barry Lopez

A city beyond the reach of empathy / Richard Ford

Why I hunt / Rick Bass

The environmental issue from hell / Bill McKibben

The obligation to endure / Rachel Carson

Am I blue? / Alice Walker

The greenest campuses : an idiosyncratic guide / Noel Perrin

The last Americans : environmental collapse and the end of civilization / Jared Diamond

15. Science and technology : what can science teach us?

Where is science taking us?

The movements of the sun and moon, 15th century / Flemish School

[photographs of] Gaseous pillars taken from the Hubble Space Telescope, 1995 / J. Hester and P. Scowen

How has nature evolved?

Natural selection / Charles Darwin

Darwin at 200 : the ongoing force of his unconventional idea / Verlyn Klinkenborg

Nutcrackerdotcom / David Sedaris

How computers change the way we think / Sherry Turkle

Can we know the universe? : reflections on a grain of sale / Carl Sagan

Staying human / Dinesh D'Souza

Anybody out there? / Oliver Sacks

The clan of one-breasted women / Terry Tempest Williams.