Contemporary Essay Book

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