Conscious Reader, The, 11th Edition

A classic thematic anthology which has long been hailed for its exceptionally rich collection of essays, poems, fiction and poetry, and for its ground-breaking inclusion of classic and contemporary images.

 

 

(* Marks New Selections).

 

I. Art and Composition *II. On Being a Conscious Reader and an Intelligent Writer  (new section)

Introduction

  Notebook

Stephen King,  from On Writing

Malcolm X, A Homemade Education

* Flannery O’Connor, The Teaching of Literature

 

Personal Writing

Virginia Woolf, The Angel in the House

* Rainier Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

 

Essays

* Patricia Kubis and Robert M. Howland, How to Develop a Good Style

* Joseph Williams and Greg Colomb, Argument, Critical Thinking, and Rationality

* Italo Calvino,             if on a winter’s night a traveler…

* Harold Brodkey, Reading. The Most Dangerous Game

Margaret Atwood, Fiction: Happy Endings

  Fiction

* Richard Russo, The Whore’s Child

  Poetry

* Gregory Bilgere, Once Again I Fail to Read an Important Novel

* Charles Bukowski, How to Be a Good Writer

Cate Marvin, Ocean Is a Word in This Poem

Walt Whitman, Poets to Come

 

III. The Search for Self and Personal Values

Introduction

  Notebook

Henry David Thoreau, Why I Went into the Woods

* Eric Brende, Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology

  Personal Writing

Annie Dillard, An American Childhood

* Colin Powell, The Good Soldier

* Arnie Kantrowitz, Under the Rainbow

* Jhumpa Lahiri, My Hyphenated Identity

Nancy Mairs,   On Being a Cripple

* Alfred Lubrano, Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams

* Koren Zailckas, Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood

* Chris Hedges, Losing Moses on the Freeway: The Ten Commandments in America

  Essay

* Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

  Fiction

Sandra Cisneros, Hips

  Poetry

* John Lennon, Working Class Hero

T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Dylan Thomas,  The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower

Denise Levertov, In Mind

Anne Sexton, Her Kind

Theodore Roethke, The Waking

 

IV. Personal Relationships

Introduction

  Notebook

Aryeh Lev Stollman, Die Grosse Liebe

Ursula Melendi, All of Heaven for Love (student writing)

  Personal Writing

Judith Ortiz Cofer, Casa: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood

* Thomas Bierowski, The Red Power Ranger and the Fruit Bat

* Brian Braiker,            Just Don’t Call Me Mr. Mom

  Essays

Andrew Sullivan, If Love Were All

Carson McCullers, Loneliness … an American Malady

The Koran, Sura 12. Joseph

Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

* Benoit Denizet-Lewis, Friends, Friends with Benefits, and the Benefits of the Local Mall

Barbara Kingsolver, Somebody’s Baby

  Fiction

Kate Chopin, A Respectable Woman

* Harry Mark Petrakis, The Journal of a Wife-Beater

  Poetry

* Tupac Shakur, Tears of a Teenage Mother

William Butler Yeats, A Prayer for My Daughter

Gwendolyn Brooks, Life for My Child Is Simple and Good

Rita Dove, Beauty and the Beast

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29 and 116

William Blake, The Clod and the Pebble, The Garden of Love

* Ani Di Franco, Educated Guess

E. E. Cummings, I Like My Body When It Is with Your

 

V. Education

Introduction

  Notebook

* David Gelerntner, Unplugged

* Ellen Seiter, Children, Politics, and the Internet

 

Personal Writing

* Jeffrey Hart, How to Get a College Education

Joan E. Hartman, What We Did and Why We Did It

  Essays

Bruno Bettleheim, The Child’s Need for Magic            

* Peggy Orenstein, What’s Wrong With Cinderella?

* Beverly Daniel Tatum, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

Lewis Thomas  , Humanities and Science

Charles Murray, What’s Wrong with Vocational School?

  Fiction

Amy Tan, Rules of the Game

Anton Chekov, The Bet

  Poetry

Langston Hughes, Theme for English B

 

VI. Popular Culture

Introduction

  Notebook

* Steven Levy, Facebook Grows Up

* Pete Rojas, Bootleg Culture

  Personal Writing

* Constance Matthiessen, Harry Potter and Divorce Among the Muggles         

Roger Ebert, Great Movies

* Andrea Casassa, The Coffee Shop (student writing)

  Essays

* Andy Bellin, Poker Nation

* Joe Woodard, Pumped, Pierced, Painted, and Pagan

* David Bartholomew, The Horror Film

* Lisa Finnegan, A Fearful Press

Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation

  Fiction

* Robin Hemley, REPLY ALL

  Poetry

* Edward Lear, The Jumblies

* Joanna Newsom, Bridges and Balloons

* Phil Kline, The Zippo Texts: Three Rumsfeld Songs

 

VII. Art and Society

Introduction

  Notebook

* Melissa Etheridge, Music as a Safe Haven

* Glenn Kurtz, Practicing

  Personal Writing

V.S. Naipaul, Two Worlds: Nobel Lecture 2001

  Essays

E. M. Forster, Art for Art’s Sake

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Playing Upon the Strings of Emptiness

* Scott McCloud, The Language of Comics

John Berger, The Uses of Photography

Christian Amigo, Intervention #1: Musical Openings

  Fiction

Willa Cather, The Sculptor’s Funeral

  Poetry

Sonia Sanchez  , A Poem for Ella Fitzgerald

 

VIII. Science, the Environment, and the Future

Introduction

  Notebook

Alan Tennant,   Great Plains of the Arctic

* Nicholas Kristof, Warm, Warmer, Warmest

  Personal Writing

Shireen Lee, The New Girls Network

  Essays

* Stephen Jay Gould, Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of the Dinosaurs

* David Quammen, Was Darwin Wrong?

* Steve D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics : The Hidden Side of Everything

* Pierre Haski, Electronic Corpses

Gina Kolata, A Clone is Born

* Paul Davies, How to Build a Time Machine

  Fiction

* Alan Lightman, A Place Where Time Stands Still

* Steven Moffat, “What I Did on My Christmas Holidays” By Sally Sparrow

  Poetry

Walt Whitman, When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer

 

IX. Freedom and Human Dignity

Introduction

  Notebook

Leo Braudy, Arms and the Man

* Marilyn Manson, Columbine: Who’s Fault is It?

  Personal Writing

* Anya Kamenetz, Generation Debt

* Slavenka Drakulic, The Strange Ability of Apartments to Divide and Multiply

* Jorn Rohwer, Beyond Memory         

  Essays

Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence; Declaration of the Rights of Man

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia C. Mott, Seneca Falls Convention

Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address

William Faulkner, Nobel Prize Award Speech

Chief Seattle, Speech on the Signing of the Treaty of Port Elliott

Plato, The Crito

* Cornel West, On Affirmative Action

Martin Luther King, I Have a Dream

Harriet Jacobs, The Women

  Fiction

Edwidge Danticat, Selection from Breath, Eyes, Memory

  Poetry

Reynolds Price, Tom, Dying of AIDS

Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach

* Taha Muhammad Ali, Revenge

 

X. Globalism, Nationalism, and Cultural Identity

Introduction

  Notebook

Adam Gopnik, The City and the Pillars

Anthony Shadid, Legacy of the Prophet

Elie Wiesel, The America I Love

* Howard Zinn, The 2000 Election and the “War on Terrorism”

* Wesley K. Clark, The Next War

  Personal Writing

* Charles Barkley and Bill Clinton, Building a Culture of Dignity

* Mohandas K. Gandhi, My Faith in Nonviolence

 

Essays

Niccolo Machiavelli, On Whether It Is Better to Be Loved or Feared

* Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear

Howard Gardner, Leading Beyond the Nation-State

* Anna Quindlen, Immigration: Newcomers by Numbers

Susan Sontag,   Regarding the Pain of Others

  Fiction

* Sherman Alexie, What You Pawn I Will Redeem

  Poetry

Katha Pollitt, Night Subway

* Sarah Little Crow-Russell, Apology to the Wasps

Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est