A thematic reader for courses in Composition and those courses that consider the essay as a form of literature. Featuring a wealth of authors and works never before anthologized, this thematic reader identifies and collects some of the most important insights, discoveries, and reflections of the past millennia as produced by its most noteworthy writers.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Reading in the Various Genres. 1. Reflections on Experience.   Nonfiction. Grandmother's Sunday Dinner, Patricia Hampl. Boyhood with Gurdjieff, Fritz Peters. Just Say No to Rugs, Dave Barry. Number One!, Jill Nelson. A Hole in the World, Richard Rhodes. The Letter 'A', Christy Brown. Rumenotomy on a Cow, James Herriot. Initiated into an Iban Tribe of Headhunters, Douchan Gersi. Fiction. Winter Dreams, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Poetry. Sonnet 30: When to the Sessions of Sweet Silent Thought, William Shakespeare. The Solitary, Sara Teasdale. 2. Influential People and Memorable Places.Nonfiction. My Father's Life, Raymond Carver. Antidisestablishmentarianism, Gayle Pemberton. My Brother, Gary Gilmore, Mikhal Gilmore. Lessons, Mark Salzman. Letters Home, Sylvia Plath. The Taj Mahal, P.D. Ouspensky. Niagara Falls, William Zinsser. Fiction. A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O'Connor. Poetry. The Youngest Daughter, Cathy Song. Those Winter Sundays, Robert Hayden. Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802, William Wordsworth. 3. The Human Condition.Nonfiction. The Lowest Animal, Mark Twain. The Chinese and the Sense of Shame, Erwin Wickert. The Social Sense, Diane Ackerman. The Perils of Obedience, Stanley Milgram. So This Was Adolescence, Annie Dillard. A Few Words About Breasts, Nora Ephron. The Myth of the Latin Woman, Judith Ortiz Cofer. Stages of Dying, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. Fiction. An Old Man, Guy de Maupassant. The Miller's Tale, Jerzy Kosinski. Poetry. Funny, Anna Kamienska. When You are Old, W.B. Yeats. Drama. Am I Blue?, Beth Henley. 4. The Value of Education.Nonfiction. Learning to Read and Write, Frederick Douglass. The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society, Jonathan Kozol. Civilize Them With a Stick, Mary Crow Dog. In Defense of Elitism, William A. Henry, III. Think about It, Frank Conroy. Speech Codes on Campus, Nat Hentoff. Fiction. The School, Donald Barthelme. Poetry. Learning to Read, Francis E. W. Harper. Workday, Linda Hogan. 5. Perspectives on Language.Nonfiction. The Language of Clothes, Alison Lurie. Language and Thought, Susanne K. Langer. The Day Language Came into My Life, Helen Keller. Propaganda under a Dictatorship, Aldous Huxley. Pornography, Margaret Atwood. Little Red Riding Hood, James Finn Garner. Women and the Language of Men, Jane Tompkins. Fiction. What We Talk about When We Talk about Love, Raymond Carver. Poetry. Myth, Muriel Rukeyser. Listen mr oxford don, John Agard. 6. Issues in Society.Nonfiction. The Turbid Ebb & Flow of Misery, Margaret Sanger. Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir, Paul Monette. Ron Mayden, Studs Terkel. The Flesh and the Devil, Kim Chernin. Want-Creation Fuels Americans' Addictiveness, Philip Slater. What is Poverty?, Jo Goodwin Parker. What's Wrong With TV Talk Shows?, Tom Shachtman. Advertisements for Oneself, Lance Morrow. Kill Em'! Crush Em'! Eat Em' Raw'!, John McMurtry. Fiction. Désirée's Baby, Kate Chopin. Say Yes, Tobias Wolff. Cervicide, Gloria Anzaldúa. Poetry. Lisa's Ritual, Age 10, Grace Caroline Bridges. Streets of Philadelphia, Bruce Springsteen. Barbie Doll, Marge Piercy. Drama. Tea Party, Betty Keller. 7. The Natural World.Nonfiction. Thinking like a Mountain, Aldo Leopold. A Very Warm Mountain, Ursula K. LeGuin. Playing Tag with Wild Dolphins, Howard Hall. Is Humanity Suicidal?, Edward O. Wilson. Big Mac and the Tropical Forests, Joseph K. Skinner. How to Kill an Ocean, Thor Heyerdahl. Fiction. Looking for a Rain God, Bessie Head. I Am a Cat, Natsume Soseki. Poetry. Crow's Elephant Totem Song, Ted Hughes. 8. The Historical Dimension.Nonfiction. Finding the Tomb, Howard Carter. To Make Them Stand in Fear, Kenneth M. Stampp. Letter, Sullivan Ballou. Death of Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman. The San Francisco Earthquake, Jack London. R.M.S. Titanic, Hanson W. Baldwin. A Noiseless Flash from Hiroshima, John Hersey. Fiction. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Ambrose Bierce. This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, Tadeusz Borowski. Poetry. Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Child's Memory, Eleni Fourtouni. 9. The Individual and the State.Nonfiction. The Rights of Man, Thomas Paine. We Have our State, Golda Meir. The Red Guards, Nien Cheng. A Nazi Prison in the Caribbean, Armando Valladares. I Have a Dream, Martin Luther King, Jr. Eulogy for a Princess, Earl Charles Spencer. Fiction. The Guest, Albert Camus. Poetry. The Unknown Citizen, W.H. Auden. The Colonel, Carolyn Forché. At First I was Given Centuries, Margaret Atwood. Drama. Protest, Václav Havel. 10. Discoveries in Science and Technology.Nonfiction. A Clone is Born, Gina Kolata. Identical Twins Reared Apart, Constance Holden. Technology in Reverse, Robert J. Samuelson. Cyberspace: If You Don't Love It, Leave It, Esther Dyson. Women and Computers, Paula Span. Fiction. The Enormous Radio, John Cheever. Poetry. When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer, Walt Whitman. I'm Gonna Be an Engineer, Peggy Seeger. 11. The Artistic Impulse.Nonfiction. How to Write with Style, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Still Just Writing, Anne Tyler. What is Real?, Alice Munro. The Exorcist Massage Parlor, Wilson Bryan Key. Mick Jagger, Sexuality, Style & Image, Sheila Whiteley. Imprisoning Time in a Rectangle, Lance Morrow. General Nguyen Ngoc Loan. Fiction. What was Mine, Ann Beattie. Poetry. In My Craft or Sullen Art, Dylan Thomas. Tell All the Truth But Tell it Slant, Emily Dickinson. In Goya's Greatest Scenes We Seem to See, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. 12. Ethical, Philosophical and Religious Issues.Nonfiction. The Meaning of Ethics, Philip Wheelwright. Lifeboat Ethics, Garrett Hardin. The Prisoner's Dilemma, Stephen Chapman. My Patient's Suicide, Timothy E. Quill. Monsters of the Brave New World, Carol Grunewald. If I Die in a Combat Zone, Tim O'Brien. Salvation, Langston Hughes. Fiction. The Country of the Blind, H.G.Wells. Where are You Going? Where Have You Been?, Joyce Carol Oates. Parables. The Allegory of the Cave, Plato. Parables in the New Testament. Parables of Buddha. Islamic Folk Stories, Nasreddin Hodja. Poetry. The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost. Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night, Dylan Thomas. The Second Coming, W.B. Yeats. Credits.Index of Authors and Titles.