Reader, The

An innovative composition of rhetoric and readings in a magazine format, The Reader urges students to ask questions as they read, write, and research about timeless topics and contemporary perspectives presented in a wide range of genres.

The Reader encourages students to explore significant topics that impact their lives and have shaped the wider culture around them.  Classic, timeless readings underscore the staying power of each topic (including identity; marriage and family; faith and religion; language; education; work; wealth and property; popular culture; and war, terrorism, and protest) but are complicated by current issues, contemporary perspectives, and varied genres that offer new opportunities for critique and exploration. 

The Reader draws on research that connects reading and writing in order to help students practice literacy strategies that broaden and strengthen their reading, writing, and researching skills.  Three rhetoric chapters explain how the problem-posing, problem-solving aspects of college-level inquiry require that students engage texts and the research that informs them using a process of thoughtful questioning–and that students bring this questioning methodology to their own processes of inventing, researching, drafting, and revising.

Table of Contents

Rhetorical Table of Contents

Preface

PART ONE

Ch. 1: Writing

Components of a Writer’s Composing Process

Planning and Inventing

Drafting

Revising

Editing and Proofreading

One Student Composing an Essay

        Ashley Jankower, "Learning Who I am as a Writer" (Literacy Narrative)

Ch. 2: Reading and Writing

Reading as a Process

Using the SQ3R Approach

Ch. 3: Research and Writing

Applying Reading and Writing Processes to Research Writing

Finding a Topic and Creating a Research Question

Choosing and Evaluating Print and Online Sources

Choosing What to Include in Your Research Writing

Avoiding Plagiarism

PART TWO

Ch. 4: Identity

Introduction

Joan Didion, “On Self-Respect”     (Essay)

Judith Ortiz Cofer, “The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria”     (Cultural Criticism)

Ernest J. Gaines, “A Very Big Order: Reconstructing Identity”     (Memoir)

Promoting Ethnic Identities on the Web

   American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee     (Web page)

   National Congress of Vietnamese Americans     (Web page)

Nancy Mairs, “On Being a Cripple”     (Essay)

Lauren Moak, “Is This What You Really Want?”     (Student Research Paper)

          Connecting the Readings     (Mairs, Moak)

Identity and Identification in Magazine Advertisements

   Dove Self-Esteem Campaign, "Thinks She's Fat"     (Advertisement)

   MyRichUncle Education Finance, “I Am Not a Car”     (Advertisement)

          Connecting the Readings     (2 Magazine ads)

W. H. Auden, “The Unknown Citizen.”     (Poem)

Lisa Nakamura, “Headhunting in Cyberspace”     (Academic Article)

Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes     (Cartoon)

James McDonald, “Student Metaphors of Themselves as Writers”     (Academic Article)

Suggestions for Essays on Identity 

   Polly Calistro, “Around America”     (Photo)

   Squares from the AIDS Memorial Quilt     (Photo)

          Connecting the Readings     (3 quilts)

Howard Nemerov, “Santa Claus”     (Poem)

Spike Lee (Dir.), "Bamboozled"     (DVD Cover)

John Powers, “A Drop in the Ocean”     (Newspaper Article)

Nelson George, "Gangsters--Real and Unreal”     (Essay)

Angela Ards, “Rhyme and Resist: Organizing the Hip-Hop Generation”     (Magazine Article)

          Connecting the Readings     (George, Ards)

Clay Jones, “I Demand Reparations!”     (Cartoon)

Kira Viator, “Stick to Ya Roots”     (Student Song Lyrics)

Andrea Kretchmer, “Movie Review: Junebug”     (Film Review)

Suggestions for Essays on Folk and Popular Culture

Ch. 12: War, Terrorism, and Protest

Introduction

Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Military-Industrial Complex Speech, 17 January 1961”     (Speech)

Zachary Scott-Singley, “April 29, 2005—Memories of Death”     (Blog)

Images of War

   Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People     (Painting)

   Pablo Picasso, Guernica     (Painting)

   Joe Rosenthal, Soldiers raising the American flag at Iwo Jima, 23 Feb. 1945     (Photo)

   Nick Ut, Girl fleeing napalm attack near Trang Bang, Vietnam, 8 June 1972     (Photo)

          Connecting the Readings     (Images of War)

Kenneth Roth, “The Law of War in the War on Terror”     (Academic Article)

James Zumwalt, “Laws of War Need to Change to Defeat ‘Uncivilized’ Enemy”     (Editorial)

          Connecting the Readings     (Roth, Zumwalt)

Susan Brison, "Gender, Terrorism, and War"     (Academic Article)

Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail”     (Letter)

Rachel Corrie, "Letter from Gaza Strip"      (Letter)

Jennifer Earl, "Where Have all the Protests Gone? Online"      (Essay)

Toni Smith, “My Turn”     (Editorial & Photo)

Suggestions for Essays on War, Terrorism, and Protest

Index

Alternate Table of Contents by Genre

• Contemporary readings in varied genres that include researched academic essays, editorials, news articles, advertisements, web pages, cartoons, speeches, and literary forms are grounded by classic essays and accommodate a wide range of pedagogical approaches, assignments, and interests.
• An innovative composition of rhetoric and readings in a magazine format plays with textbook methods of arrangement and delivery, providing traditional, quality instructional material for writing courses in an innovative editorial style, an engaging full-color design, and a less expensive price, appealing to a new generation of college students.
• Student work in different genres demonstrates how writing can vary depending on audience and purpose:
   
  
  • Student-authored articles originally published in general-interest periodicals show students engaging in public discourse, influencing and informing "real-world" audiences. 
  • Researched student-authored essays created in response to classroom assignments show synthesis techniques such as summary, paraphrase, and quotation, highlight strategies students' peers used when approaching similar topics, and demonstrate citation in the recently updated MLA style.

• Three themes explored throughout the topical readings chapters of the anthology offer students the opportunity to reflect on these threads through the course term:
   
  

  • Readings on Student Life explore issues such as credit card debt, campus activism, holding down a job while in school, the practice of religious faith at college, and more.  Students have the opportunity to read about, discuss, and write about matters related to success in college, and they engage topics that allow them to be content-area experts from the start of the term.  

  • Issues pertaining to Gender and Technology are explored throughout the reader, taking a 21^st century approach to studying how tech and gender influence and are influenced by all of the topics in the reader.

• Three rhetoric chapters open the book and teach students strategies for asking questions as they read, write, and research throughout the term.
   
  • A unique chapter on Research (Ch. 3) encourages students to practice critical reading skills by asking questions to evaluate research source material, and to practice source-based writing skills such as summary, paraphrase, and quotation.
  • An early chapter on Writing (Ch. 2)asks students to implement reading strategies in order to analyze writing assignments and also teaches ways of using writing to better explore, comprehend, question, and critique texts.
  • An introductory chapter on Reading (Ch. 1) teaches students to ask questions in order to learn how and when to read for different purposes (including comprehension, analysis or critique, and rhetorical understanding) and connect reading to writing by adapting invention heuristics as reading strategies.

• Plentiful and quality apparatus offers students opportunities for thought and discussion, low-stakes writing, online and ethnographic research, and formal writing:
   
  

  • Journal and Discussion Questions after each reading create extensive opportunities to practice textual analysis, rhetorical analysis, reading comprehension, and skill at reading graphs, charts, numbers, and statistics.  Informal writing prompts often ask students to identify a readings’ thesis/ claim and its support/ evidence or to create an outline of the text in order to better recognize the writer’s decisions.

  • Topics for Writing after each reading present formal writing opportunities that might ask students to research the reading’s source material and reflect on the author’s use of that content, or expand on the readings’ topic by writing a defense or challenge.

  • Suggestions for Essays close each chapter and ask students to grapple with an issue presented within the chapter, synthesize multiple readings in the anthology, and write their own source-based compositions.

  • Connecting the Readings questions follow topically-related readings clusters within each chapter, facilitate intertextual discussion, and offer students a conversation to enter through their own writing and research.

  • Chapter Introductions encourage students to reflect critically on each chapter’s topic, consider historical perspectives as well as contemporary ones, and realize how it influences their own lives as well as impacts the culture as a whole.
    

• Popular Culture is defined broadly to include local and folk culture so that students have the opportunity to explore community figures, rituals, and celebrations, investigating local influences in addition to those more national (and often corporate) in scale and scope.  

• Works of fiction and poetry explore topics using figurative language instead of the thesis-driven prose of many of the non-fiction readings, allowing students to broaden their interpretive and analytic reading skills.

• Companion Website for Thematic Reader
  http://www.ablongman.com/mcdonald1e