The Essay connection Book

Contents

Note: An asterisk (*) denotes a student author.

• I. On Writing

  1. Writers in Process—Finding the Words, the Forms, and the Reasons to Write

  Amy Tan,"Mother Tongue"

  B.K. Loren,"Living Without/With Words"

  Elie Wiesel, "Why I Write: Making No Become Yes"

  *Matt Nocton, "Why I Write"

  2. Getting Started

  Stephen King, "A door...you are willing to shut" from On Writing

  Anne Lamott, "Polaroids"

  William Least Heat-Moon, "A List of Nothing in Particular"

  *Selections from Student Writers' Notebooks

  3. Writing: Re-Vision and Revision

  Maxine Hong Kingston, "On Discovery"

  Donald M. Murray, "The Maker's Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscripts"

  John Trimbur, "Guidelines for Collaborating in Groups"

  Mary Ruffin, "Writer's Notebook Entries: The Evolution of 'Mama's Smoke'"

  • II. Determining Ideas in a Sequence

    4. Narration

    V. Penelope Pelizzon, "Clever and Poor"

    Sherman Alexie, "What Sacagawea Means to Me"

    E.B. White, "Once More to the Lake"

    Anne Fadiman, "Under Water"

    Frederick Douglass, "Resurrection"

    Art Spiegelman, "Mein Kampf (My Struggle)"

    *Jason Verge, "The Habs"

    5. Process Analysis

    Marilyn Nelson, "Asparagus"

    Isaac Asimov, "Those Crazy Ideas"

    Tom and Ray Magliozzi, "Inside the Engine"

    Scott Russell Sanders, "The Inheritance of Tools"

    Chang-rae Lee, "Coming Home Again"

    NtozakeShange, "What Is It We Really Harvestin' Here?"

    *Ning Yu, "Red and Black, or One English Major's Beginning"

    6. Cause and Effect

    Mary Oliver, "August"

    *Amanda N. Cagle, "On the Banks of the Bogue Chitto"

    Zitkala-Sa, from The School Days of an Indian Girl

    Jonathan Kozol, "The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society"

    Stephanie Coontz, "Blaming the Family for Economic Decline"

    Atul Gawande, "The Cancer-Cluster Myth."

    *Megan McGuire, "Wake Up Call"

    • III. Clarifying Ideas

      7. Description

      Meredith Hall, "Killing Chickens"

      Linda Villarosa, "How Much of the Body Is Replaceable?"

      Scott Russell Sanders, "Under the Influence: Paying the Price of My Father's Booze"

      Suzanne Britt, "That Lean and Hungry Look"

      Istvan Banyai "Inflation"

      Mark Twain, "Uncle John's Farm"

      Linda Hogan, "Dwellings"

      *Asiya S. Tschannerl, "One Remembers Most What One Loves"

      8. Division and Classification

      Alexander Pope, "On the Collar of a Dog"

      Natalie Angier, "Why Men Don't Last: Self-Destruction as a Way of Life"

      Deborah Tannen, "Fast Forward: "Technologically Enhanced Aggression"

      David Sedaris , "Make That a Double"

      Richard Rodriguez, "Family Values"

      Gelareh Asayesh, "Shrouded in Contradiction"

      *Sumbul Khan, "Mirror, Mirror On the Wall, Who's the Fairest of Them All?"

      9. Definition

      Jenny Spinner, "Together in the Old Square Print, 1976"

      Charles Darwin, "Understanding Natural Selection"

      Howard Gardner, "Who Owns Intelligence?"

      Lynda Barry, "Common Scents"

      *Jasmine Innerarity, "Code Blue: The Process"

      Abraham Verghese, "Code Blue: The Story"

      *Jenny Spinner, "In Search of Our Past"

      10. Comparison and Contrast

      Elizabeth Tallent, "No One's A Mystery"

      Deborah Tannen, "Communication Styles"

      Sherry Turkle "How Computers Change the Way We Think"

      Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory"

      Bill McKibben, "Designer Genes"

      *Kate Loomis, "Spiderwebs"

      • IV. Arguing Directly and Indirectly

        11. Appeal to Reason: Deductive and Inductive Arguments

        Thomas Jefferson, "The Declaration of Independence"

        Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

        Robert Reich, "The Global Elite"

        Evan Eisenberg, "Dialogue Boxes You Should Have Read More Carefully"

        Anna Quindlen, "Uncle Sam and Aunt Samantha"

        *Matthew C. Allen, "The Rhetorical Situation of the Scientific Paper and the 'Appearance' of Objectivity."

        12. Appealing to Emotion and Ethics

        Martín Espada, "The Community College Revises Its Curriculum in Response to Changing Demographics"

        Abraham Lincoln, "The Gettysburg Address"

        Jonathan Swift, "A Modest Proposal"

        Peter Singer, "The Singer Solution to World Poverty".

        G. Anthony Gorry, "Steal This MP3 File: What Is Theft?"

        Charles M. Young, "Losing: An American Tradition"

        *Matt Nocton, "Harvest of Gold, Harvest of Shame"

        • V. Controversy in Context: Implications of World Terrorism and World Peace

          An Argument Casebook

          13. Terrorism

          Seamus Heaney, "Horace and Thunder"

          Tim O'Brien, "How to Tell a True War Story"

          Laurie Fendrich, "History Overcomes Stories"

          Kandi Tayebi "Warring Memories"

          National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, "Institutionalizing Imagination: The Case of Aircraft as Weapons"

          Bernard Lewis, "What Went Wrong?"

          Mark Juergensmeyer, from Terror in the Mind of God

          Wendell Berry, "Thoughts in the Presence of Fear"

          Mary Graham, "The Information Wars"

          Eliza Griswold, "Buying Rations in Kabul"

          14. World Peace: Nobel Peace Prize Awards and Speeches

          Walt Whitman, "A Noiseless Patient Spider"

          Jimmy Carter, "Citizen of a Troubled World" (2002)

          Kofi Annan, "The United Nations in the 21st Century," (2001)

          James Orbinski, M.D., and Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), "Humanitarianism," (1999)

          Yitzak Rabin, "The One Radical Solution is Peace" and Yasser Arafat, "The Crescent Moon of Peace" (1994)

          Photo Essay: War and Peace Images, Impressions, Interpretations

          Nelson Mandela, "The End of Apartheid," and Frederik Willem de Klerk, "Reformation and Reconciliation in South Africa"(1993)

          Aung San Suu Kyi, "The Revolution of Spirit" (1991)

          Rigoberta Menchú Tum, "Five Hundred Years of Mayan Oppression" (1992)

          The 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso), "Inner Peace and Human Rights" (1989)

          Betty Williams, "The Movement of the Peace People" (1976)