The Blair Reader is a thematic reader with over 100 classic and contemporary readings. Themes include family, gender, education, language, and the enviorment. New focus topics include reading on texting and social networking.

Table of Contents

TOPICAL CLUSTERS RHETORICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE INTRODUCTION: BECOMING A CRITICAL READER CHAPTER 1 FAMILY AND MEMORY *Poetry: Linda Hogan, "Heritage" Poetry: Robert Hayden, "Those Winter Sundays" *Amy Ma, "My Grandmother's Dumpling" E. B. White, "Once More to the Lake" Maxine Hong Kingston, "No Name Woman" Alice Walker, "Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self" *Gary Shteyngart, "Sixty-Nine Cents" *Sandra Cisneros, "The Storyteller" CHAPTER 2 ISSUES IN EDUCATION Lynda Barry, "The Sanctuary of School" John Holt, "School Is Bad for Children" Maya Angelou, "Graduation" Bich Minh Nguyen, "The Good Immigrant Student" Daniel H. Pink, "School's Out" *Charles Murray, "Should the Obama Generation Drop Out?" *Daniel S. Cheever, Jr., "Is College Worth the Money?" Christina Hoff Sommers, "For More Balance on Campuses" Fiction: Edward P. Jones, "The First Day" Focus: How Much Do a College's Facilities Really Matter? *Goldie Blumenstyk, "In Iowa, 2 Colleges Separated by 150 Miles and $1.37 Billion: Grinnell College" *Sara Hebel, "In Iowa, 2 Colleges Separated by 150 Miles and $1.37 Billion: Clarke College" Photo Essay from The Chronicle of Higher Education CHAPTER 3 THE POLITICS OF LANGUAGE Poetry: Jim Sagel, "Baca Grande" Richard Rodriguez, "Aria" Amy Tan, "Mother Tongue" Frederick Douglass, "Learning to Read and Write" Alleen Pace Nilsen, "Sexism in English: Embodiment and Language" *Joan M. Herbers, "The Loaded Language of Science" Jonathan Kozol, "The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society" George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language" *Focus: Is Texting Destroying the English Language? *John Humphrys, "I h8 txt msgs: How Texting Is Wrecking Our Language" *David Crystal, "2b or not 2b?" *Louis Menand, "Thumbspeak: Is Texting Here to Stay?" CHAPTER4 MEDIA AND SOCIETY Marie Winn, "Television: The Plug-In Drug" Salman Rushdie, "Reality TV: A Dearth of Talent and the Death of Morality" *Michael Hirschorn, "The Revolution Will Be Televised" Mary Eberstadt, "Eminem Is Right" *Editors of the Rocky Mountain News, "Goodbye, Colorado" *David Swensen and Michael Schmidt, "News You Can Endow" *Stephen Roxburgh, "The Universe of Meaning" *Poetry: Louise Erdrich, "Dear John Wayne" *Focus: Does Social Networking Connect Us or Keep Us Apart? *Alice Mathias, "The Fakebook Generation" Brent Staples, "What Adolescents Miss When We Let Them Grow Up in Cyberspace" *Robert W. Lucky, "To Twitter or Not to Twitter?" *Dave Taylor, "Does Social Networking Really Connect You to Humanity?" *Reid Goldsborough, "Social Networking: Crossing Digital Divide Can Pay Dividends" CHAPTER 5 GENDER AND IDENTITY Poetry: Marge Piercy, "Barbie Doll" Poetry: Sharon Olds, "Rite of Passage" Michael Nava, "Gardenland, Sacramento, California" E. J. Graff, "The M/F Boxes" Judy Brady, "Why I Want a Wife" Glenn Sacks, "Stay-at-Home Dads" *Warren Farrell, "Man Bashing: Trivial Pursuit or a Truth with Consequences?" Leah Hager Cohen, "Without Apology: Girls, Women, and the Desire to Fight" Deborah Tannen, "Marked Women" Focus: Who Has It Harder, Girls or Boys? *Stephen Hinshaw, "What Is the Triple Bind?" Christina Hoff Sommers, "The War Against Boys" Rosalind C. Barnett and Caryl Rivers, "Men Are from Earth, and So Are Women: It's Faulty Research That Sets Them Apart" CHAPTER 6 THE AMERICAN DREAM Poetry: Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus" *Sherman Alexie, "What Sacagawea Means to Me (and Perhaps to You)" Richard Wright, "The Library Card" Dinesh D'Souza, "Becoming American" Judith Ortiz Cofer, "The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria" Gish Jen, "Coming into the Country" Brent Staples, "Just Walk On By" Lars Eighner, "On Dumpster Diving" *James Howard Kunstler, "Where Evil Dwells: Reflections on the Columbine School Massacre" Focus: What Is the American Dream? Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence *Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address Martin Luther King, Jr., "I Have a Dream" *Elizabeth Cady Stanton, "The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions CHAPTER 7 WHY WE WORK Andrew Curry, "Why We Work" Gary Soto, "One Last Time" Virginia Woolf, "Professions for Women" Arlie Hochschild, "The Second Shift" Eric Schlosser, "Behind the Counter" Barbara Ehrenreich, "Selling in Minnesota" *Robert B. Reich, "Don't Blame Wal-Mart" Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "Delusions of Grandeur" *Fiction: John Updike, "A & P" Focus: Is Outsourcing Bad for America? Cullen Murphy, "Let Someone Else Do It: The Impulse Behind Everything" Clay Risen, "Missed Target: Is Outsourcing Really so Bad?" Albino Barrera, "Fair Exchange: Who Benefits from Outsourcing?" *CHAPTER 8 SAVING THE PLANET *Leslie Marmon Silko, from "Through the Stories We Hear Who We Are" *John Muir, "The American Forests" *Wendell Berry, "Being Kind to the Land" *Rachel Carson, "The Obligation to Endure" *John Tierney, "Fateful Voice of a Generation Still Drowns Out Real Science" *Heather Rogers, "The Conquest of Garbage" *Alan Weisman, "Built to Last" *Fiction: Steven Millhauser, "The Invasion from Outer Space" *Focus: How Can We Create a More Sustainable Environment? *Bill McKibben, "The Challenge to Environmentalism" *Kate Zernike, "Green, Greener, Greenest" *Michael Pollan, "Why Bother?" CHAPTER 9 RELIGION IN AMERICA Langston Hughes, "Salvation" *Margaret Mead, "New Superstitions for Old" Tenzin Gyatso, Dalai Lama XIV, "Our Faith in Science" Tayari Jones, "Among the Believers" David Brooks, "Kicking the Secularist Habit" William J. Stuntz, "Turning Faith into Elevator Music" Jeffery Sheler and Michael Betzold, "Muslim in America" William C. Symonds, Brian Grow, and John Cady, "Earthly Empires" *John F. Kennedy, "I Believe in an America Where the Separation of Church and State Is Absolute" Fiction: Raymond Carver, "Cathedral" Focus: Is There Intelligent Design in Nature? Christoph Schonborn, "Finding Design in Nature" H. Allen Orr, "Why Intelligent Design Isn't" Kenneth R. Miller, "Finding Darwin's God" CHAPTER 10 MAKING CHOICES Poetry: Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken" Poetry: Linda Pastan, "Ethics" George Orwell, "Shooting an Elephant" Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail" *Garrett Hardin, "Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against 'Aid' That Harms" Claire McCarthy, "Dog Lab" Stanley Milgram, "The Perils of Obedience" *David Foster Wallace, Commencement Speech *Lasantha Wickrematunge, "And Then They Camefor Me" Fiction: Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" CREDITS * new to this edition