Table of Contents
Preface.
Introduction: Reading and Writing Essays.
History and Context.
Pleasures of the Essay.
Types of Essays.
Reading Essays—Reading Annie Dillard's “Living Like Weasels” .
Writing Essays.
The Qualities of Good Writing.
An Overview of the Writing Process.
Writing from Reading—An Example.
Susan Sontag: “A Woman's Beauty: Put-Down or Power Source?”
1. Andr Aciman, Shadow Cities.
2. Maya Angelou, Graduation.
3. Gloria Anzalda, How to Tame a Wild Tongue.
4. W.H. Auden, Work, Labor, and Play.
5. Francis Bacon, Of Studies.
6. Russell Baker, Growing Up.
7. James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son.
8. James Baldwin, Stranger in the Village.
9. Dave Barry, Road Warrior.
10. Mary Catherine Bateson, Attending a World.
11. Susan Brownmiller, Femininity.
12. Jane Brox, Influenza 1918.
13. Angela Carter, The Wound in the Face.
14. Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Myth of the Latin Woman.
15. Judith Ortiz Cofer, Silent Dancing.
16. Bernard Cooper, Burl's.
17. Aaron Copland, How To Listen to Music.
18. Charles Darwin, Natural Selection.
19. Guy Davenport, The Geography of the Imagination.
20. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex.
21. Joan Didion, Marrying Absurd.
22. Joan Didion, On Self-Respect.
23. Annie Dillard, Living Like Weasels.
24. Annie Dillard, Seeing.
25. John Donne, No Man is an Island.
26.Frederick Douglass, Learning to Read and Write.
27. W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folks.
28. Andre Dubus, Light of the Long Night.
29. Gretel Ehrlich, About Men.
30. Loren Eiseley, The Flow of the River.
31. Elizabeth I, Speech to the Troops at Tilbury.
32. Ralph Ellison, Living with Music.
33. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature.
34. Anne Fadiman, Never Do That to a Book.
35. E.M. Forster, What I Believe.
36. Benjamin Franklin, Arriving at Perfection.
37. Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
38. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., In the Kitchen.
39. Ellen Goodman, The Company Man.
40. Nadine Gordimer, Where Do Whites Fit In?
41. Mary Gordon, Ellis Island.
42. Stephen Jay Gould, Women's Brains.
43. William Hazlitt, On the Pleasure of Hating.
44. Edward Hoagland, The Courage of Turtles.
45. Barbara Holland, Naps.
46. Langston Hughes, Salvation.
47. Zora Neale Hurston, How It Feels To Be Colored Me.
48. Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence.
49. Franz Kafka, Letter to His Father.
50. Jamaica Kincaid, On Seeing England for the First Time.
51. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail.
52. Maxine Hong Kingston, No Name Woman.
53. Maxine Hong Kingston, Silence.
54. Charles Lamb, A Bachelor's Complaint.
55. Robin Tolmach Lakoff, You are What You Say.
56. D.H. Lawrence, Benjamin Franklin's Virtues.
57. Chang-Rae Lee, Coming Home Again.
58. Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address.
59. Barry Lopez, Polar Bears.
60. Niccol Machiavelli, The Morals of the Prince.
61. Nancy Mairs, On Being a Cripple.
62. Karl Marx and Friederich Engels, Bourgeoisie and Proletarians.
63. John McPhee, Grizzly Bears.
64. H.L. Mencken, Portrait of an Ideal World.
65. N. Scott Momaday, The Way to Rainy Mountain.
66. Michel de Montaigne, Of Cannibals.
67. Michel de Montaigne, Of Smells.
68. Joyce Carol Oates, On Boxing.
69. George Orwell, Politics and the English Language.
70. George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant.
71. Cynthia Ozick, The Seam of the Snail.
72. Alexander Petrunkevitch, The Spider and the Wasp.
73. Plato, The Allegory of the Cave.
74. Katherine Anne Porter, The Necessary Enemy.
75. Richard Rodriguez, The Achievement of Desire.
76. Scott Russell Sanders, Under the Influence.
77. Chief Seattle, Speech on the Signing of the Treaty of Port Elliott.
78. Richard Selzer, The Masked Marvel's Last Toehold.
79. Leslie Marmon Silko, Lnndscape, History, and the Pueblo Imagination.
80. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions.
81. Brent Staples, Black Men and Public Space.
82. Shelby Steele, On Being Black and Middle Class.
83. Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal.
84. Amy Tan, Mother Tongue.
85. Deborah Tannen, Different Words, Different Worlds.
86. Lewis Thomas, The Corner of the Eye.
87. Henry David Thoreau, Why I Went to the Woods.
88. James Thurber, University Days.
89. Sojourner Truth, Aren't I a Woman?
90. Barbara Tuchman: The Black Death.
91. Mark Twain, Two Views of the River.
92. Alice Walker, Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self.
93. E.B. White, Once More to the Lake.
94. E.B. White, The Ring of Time.
95. Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff.
96. Tobias Wolff, The Duke of Deception.
97. Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women.
98. Virginia Woolf, The Death of the Moth.
99. Virginia Woolf, Professions for Women.
100. Richard Wright, Writing and Reading.
61 essays by men.
39 essays by women.
9 writers appear twice.
4 men and 5 women (3 minority writers).
29 essays by minority writers.
15 Black writers' essays.
5 Hispanic.
4 Asian American.
3 Native American.
2 Disabled.
21 pre-twentieth century essays.
79 twentieth-century essays.
