Table of Contents
Preface for Instructors
Introduction for Students
On These Writers and Their Work
On Reading Essays
On Modern Style: An Ethic of Clarity
Modern Writers on Style
Edward Abbey, Aravaipa Canyon
Margaret Atwood, Alien Territory
James Baldwin, If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?
John Berger, Her Secrets
Raymond Carver, My Father's Life
Judith Ortiz Cofer, Primary Lessons
Frank Conroy, Think About It
Malcolm Cowley, The View from 80
Joan Didion, Holy Water
Annie Dillard, Total Eclipse
E. L. Doctorow, False Documents
Andre Dubus, Imperiled Men
Gerald Early, Life with Daughters: Watching the Miss America Pageant
Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces
Ian Frazier, Dating Your Mom
Paul Fussell, Notes on Class
Stephen Jay Gould, Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of Dinosaurs
Francine Du Plessix Gray, On Friendship
Donald Hall, A Ballad of the Republic
Joy Harjo, Family Album
Stephen Hawking, Is EverythingDetermined?
Vicki Hearne, What's Wrong with Animal Rights
Edward Hoagland, Learning to Eat Soup
Sue Hubbell, The Great American Pie Expedition
Molly Ivins, Three Columns
Diane Johnson, Rape
Jamaica Kincaid, Flowers of Evil
Maxine Hong Kingston, No Name Woman
Ursula K. Le Guin, Bryn Mawr Commencement Address
Alison Lurie, Clothing as a Sign System
Nancy Mairs, Carnal Acts
John McPhee, The Search for Marvin Gardens
Naomi Shihab Nye, Newcomers in a Troubled Land
Joyce Carol Oates, Against Nature
Cynthia Ozick, The First Day of School: Washington Square, 1946
Walker Percy, The Loss of the Creature
Adrienne Rich, A Leak in History
Richard Rodriguez, The Achievement of Desire
Scott Russell Sanders, Doing Time in the Thirteenth Chair
Randy Shilts, Talking AIDS to Death
Charles Simic, The Spider's Web
Gary Soto, Black Hair
Amy Tan, Mother Tongue
Lewis Thomas, The Tucson Zoo
Marianna De Marco Torgovnick, On Being White, Female, and Born in Bensonhurst
Barbara W. Tuchman, History as Mirror
John Updike, The Disposable Rocket
Gore Vidal, H. L. Mencken the Journalist
Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens
Eudora Welty, The Little Store
