Reading Literature and Writing Argument, 7th edition
- Missy James |
- Alan P. Merickel |
- Jenny McHenry |
Title overview
For courses in Introduction to literature, literature for composition, or argument.
Encourages students to engage with literature and apply the principles of argument
Reading Literature and Writing Argument is organized into 2 parts as Rhetoric and Anthology. It provides multi-genre reading experiences that immerse students in critical and creative thinking as they address problems and issues from multiple perspectives. The authors encourage students to see language create meaning in their lives, and to see themselves as writers with a purpose and audience.
The 7th Edition is extensively revised, with abundant new reading selections, new activities, student writing samples and more.
Hallmark features of this title
- Part 1, Rhetoric (Chapters 1-5) teaches students how to write compelling and thoughtful arguments. Tools include definitions of terms, instruction in writing process, key concepts, student samples, and extended assignments.
- Part 2, Anthology (Chapters 6-9) reinforces the lessons learned in earlier chapters using literary selections and pedagogical activities such as Collaboration Activities and Making Connections.
- Anthology reading selections focus on 3 broad cultural themes: Individual and Community Identity, Crime and Punishment, and Power and Responsibility.
- Throughout Part 2's 4 literature-themed chapters, the research and writing topics integrate enduring themes and contemporary issues.
New and updated features of this title
- NEW: More than 25 new reading selections are paired with updated contemporary and classic works.
- NEW and UPDATED: The text includes new multimodal activities to practice composing in key 21st century communication modes, along with updated end-of-chapter activities.
- NEW and UPDATED: New biographical notes on reading selection authors have been added, and the glossary has been extensively revised to include key terms.
Rhetoric
- NEW and UPDATED: Extensive changes to Rhetoric chapters include new student writing examples (e.g., 1 literary argument) and a nearly new Ch. 2 that emphasizes both creative and critical reading.
- NEW: Take Note boxes summarize key information, provide tips, and pose challenges, while new midchapter Journal writing tasks and Look It Up activities direct students to online sources for research and writing tasks.
Anthology
- NEW and UPDATED: New chapter-opening artwork for thematic prewriting and discussions lets students practice reading visual images creatively and critically, while the updated critical-thinking and writing topics that follow each reading selection allow students to engage with recent events and issues.
Table of contents
I. RHETORIC
1. Connecting Argument and Literature
2. Reading Creatively and Reading Critically
3. Analyzing Argument
4. Writing an Argument Essay
5. Researching and Documenting an Argument Essay
II. ANTHOLOGY
6. Individual and Community Identity
7. Crime and Punishment
8. Power and Responsibility
Glossary
Authors’ Biographical Notes
Author/Title Index
Subject Index
COMPREHENSIVE CONTENTS
I. RHETORIC
1. Connecting Argument and Literature
1.1 Academic Argument versus Confrontational Argument1.2 Academic Argument and Critical Thinking
1.3 Reading Literature to Expand Thinking and to Explore Issues
Mercedez Holtry, “Something out of Nothing”1.4 Chapter Activities
David Brooks, “The Art of Thinking Well”
Beth Ann Fennelly, “We Are the Renters”
2. Reading Creatively and Reading Critically
2.1 Active Reading
2.3 Reading Creatively
Dudley Randall, “Ballad of Birmingham”2.4 Reading Critically
2.5 Synthesizing Creative and Critical ReadingStudent Essay: Doralicia Giacoman-Soto, “‘Ballad of Birmingham’: A Mother’s Grief Delivers a Message to Us All”
Theodore Roethke, “My Papa’s Waltz”
William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow”2.6 Chapter Activities
Robert Browning, “Porphyria’s Lover”
3. Analyzing Argument
3.1 Components of an ArgumentKenneth Rexroth, “Cold Before Dawn”William Blake, “London”
3.2 Logical Fallacies
3.3 Rhetorical Context and Aristotle’s Argument Model
Martín Espada, “Federico’s Ghost”
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18
Jamaica Kincaid, “Girl”
3.4 Chapter Activities
Robert Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays”
Randy Horick, “Truer to the Game”
Thomas E. Templeton, New York Times letter to the editor
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (excerpt)
Wilfred Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est”
Bret Stephens, “The Dying Art of Disagreement” (excerpt)
4. Writing an Argument Essay
4.1 Focusing an Argument Essay Assignment
4.2 Articulating a Claim and Developing a Plan for Writing an Argument Essay
4.3 Creating and Revising a Draft
Student Essay: John Miller, “Domestic Oil Drilling: Providing Little, Wasting a Lot”
4.4 Rogerian Argument Strategy: Creative Problem Solving
Student Essay: Christian Garcia, “A Bull’s Life”
4.5 Chapter Activities
Student Essay: Cale Blount, “The Last Words of Power”
5. Researching and Documenting an Argument Essay
5.1 Researching to Discover
5.2 Locating Credible Sources
5.3 Incorporating Sources
5.4 Documenting Sources
5.5 Using an Annotated Student Essay as a Model
Student Essay: Josh Griep, “Wild Captives: The Exotic Animal Trade”
5.6 Chapter Activities
Jennifer Bussey, “Critical Essay on ‘The Red Convertible’” (excerpt)
Student Essay: Marlee Head, “A Study in Sherlock”
II. ANTHOLOGY
6. Individual and Community Identity
6.1 Prewriting and Discussion: Individual and Community Identity
6.2 Fiction
6.3 Kate Chopin, “The Storm”
6.4 O. Henry, “The Gift of the Magi”
6.5 Katherine Mansfield, “The Garden Party”
6.6 Shirley Jackson, “The Lottery”
6.7 Louise Erdrich, “The Red Convertible”
6.8 Rick Bass, “Antlers”
6.9 Randall Kenan, “The Foundations of the Earth”
6.10 Beth H. Piatote, “Beading Lesson”
6.11 Poetry
6.12 Emily Dickinson, “Much Madness is divinest Sense”
6.13 Thomas Hardy, “The Ruined Maid”
6.14 Edwin Arlington Robinson, “Richard Cory”
6.15 Claude McKay, “Outcast”
6.16 Adrienne Rich, “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”
6.17 Gary Snyder, “Not Leaving the House”
6.18 Judy Grahn, “Ella, in a Square Apron, Along Highway 80”
6.19 Peter Meinke, “Advice to My Son”
6.20 Cathy Song, “Lost Sister”
6.21 Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”
6.22 Margaret Walker, “Lineage”
6.23 Alma Luz Villanueva, “Crazy Courage”
6.24 Michael Cleary, “Boss’s Son”
6.25 Meri Culp, “Cayenne Warning”
6.26 Margarita Engle, “Counting”
6.27 Drama
6.28 William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night; Or, What You Will
6.29 Sharon E. Cooper, Siriously
6.30 Nonfiction
6.31 Sullivan Ballou, Major Sullivan Ballou’s Letter to His Wife
6.32 Scott Russell Sanders, “The Men We Carry in Our Minds”
6.33 Richard Rodriguez, “The Chinese in All of Us”
6.34 John Hope Franklin, “The Train from Hate”
6.35 Lu Vickers, “New Last Words for My Mother: I meant what I said, but I wish I hadn’t said it.”
6.36 Robin D. G. Kelley, “The People in Me”
6.37 Katrina Karkazis and Rebecca Jordan-Young, “The Trouble with Too Much T”
6.38 Laurie Penny, “Bots at Work: Men Will Lose the Most Jobs. That’s OK.”
6.39 Chapter Activities
Topics for Writing Arguments
Taking a Global Perspective: Individuals and Global Online Communities
Collaborating on a Rogerian Argument
Sample Topic: Immigration Reform
Arguing Themes from Literature
Multimodal Activity: “Never Say Die” Diners
7. Crime and Punishment
7.1 Prewriting and Discussion: Crime and Punishment
7.2 Fiction
7.3 Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Birth-Mark”
7.4 Edgar Allen Poe, “The Cask of Amontillado”
7.5 Ambrose Bierce, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”
7.6 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”
7.7 Flannery O’Connor, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”
7.8 Brady Udall, “He Becomes Deeply and Famously Drunk”
7.9 Poetry
7.10 “A Few Lines on Magnus Mode, Richard Hodges & J. Newington Clark”
7.11 A. E. Housman, “The Use and Abuse of Toads”
7.12 D. H. Lawrence, “Snake”
7.13 Don Marquis, “A Communication from Archy the Cockroach”
7.14 Langston Hughes, “Justice”
7.15 Marge Piercy, “What’s That Smell in the Kitchen?”
7.16 Etheridge Knight, “Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane”
7.17 Robert Johnson, “Police line: do not cross”
7.18 Drama
7.19 Susan Glaspell, Trifles
7.20 Nonfiction
7.21 Francis Bacon, “Of Revenge”
7.22 George G. Vest, “Eulogy of the Dog”
7.23 George Orwell, “A Hanging”
7.24 Edward Abbey, “Eco-Defense”
7.25 Peter J. Henning, “Determining a Punishment That Fits the Crime”
7.26 Barry Meier, “Origins of an Epidemic: Purdue Pharma Knew Its Opioids Were Widely Abused”
7.27 Chapter Activities
Topics for Writing Arguments
Taking a Global Perspective: Gun Control Laws and Mass Shootings
Collaborating on a Rogerian Argument
Sample Topic: Implicit Bias Training for Police
Arguing Themes from Literature
Multimodal Activity: The Many Faces of Justice
8. Power and Responsibility
8.1 Prewriting and Discussion: Power and Responsibility
8.2 Fiction
8.3 Washington Irving, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
8.4 Alphonse Daudet, “The Last Lesson”
8.5 Edith Wharton, “The Choice”
8.6 Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried”
8.7 Lucia Berlin, “A Manual for Cleaning Women”
8.8 Ed Vega, “Spanish Roulette”
8.9 Mark Spragg, “A Boy’s Work”
8.10 Virgil Suárez, “Bombardment”
8.11 Poetry
8.12 John Milton, “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent”
8.13 Rainer Maria Rilke, “The Panther”
8.14 Robert Frost, “Mending Wall”
8.15 Claude McKay, “America”
8.16 Langston Hughes, “Democracy”
8.17 Maxine Kumin, “Woodchucks”
8.18 Louise Erdrich, “Dear John Wayne”
8.19 Martín Espada, “Bully”
8.20 Gwendolyn Brooks, “The Mother”
8.21 Naomi Shihab Nye, “Famous”
8.22 Drama
8.23 Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband
8.24 Nonfiction
8.25 Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865
8.26 Chief Joseph, “I will fight no more forever”
8.27 Richard Wright, from Black Boy (American Hunger)
8.28 Frank Schaeffer and John Schaeffer, “My Son the Marine?”
8.29 Barack Obama, Second Inaugural Address, January 21, 2013
8.30 Bret Stephens, “The Dying Art of Disagreement”
8.31 Emily Anthes, “A Floating House to Resist the Floods of Climate Change”
8.32 Lisa L. Lewis, “Why We Still Allow Bullying to Flourish in Kids’ Sports”
8.33 Eva Hagberg Fisher, “How I Learned to Look Believable”
8.34 Chapter Activities
8.34.1 Topics for Writing Arguments
8.34.2 Taking a Global Perspective: “Killer Robots” and Warfare: Eliminating Human Error and Human Decision Making — for Better or for Worse?
8.34.3 Collaborating on a Rogerian Argument
Sample Topic: Online Activity and Personal Data — Who Is Responsible for Data Breaches?
8.34.4 Arguing Themes from Literature
8.34.5 Multimodal Activity: The New Frontier: AI and Human Experience
Glossary
Authors’ Biographical Notes
Author/Title Index
Subject Index
Author bios
About our authors
Missy James was Professor of English at Tallahassee Community College, in Florida, for more than 25 years. She received her bachelor's degree in English from Vanderbilt University and master's degree in English from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her primary teaching interests were British literature, American literature and college composition, including writing about literature and writing argument and persuasion. From 2000 to 2007, Missy served as English Program Chair. During her tenure as chair, the first-semester college composition course was redesigned with a focus on the implementation of instructional technology to improve course delivery and student success rates. From 2003 to 2007, Missy served as faculty leader of the campus-wide critical thinking initiative. She was awarded a NISOD Teaching Excellence Award in 2011.
Alan Merickel taught composition and literature courses at community colleges in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Florida for 30 years. After earning a master's degree at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, he was hired by a nearby community college where he discovered he greatly admired the mission of community colleges. He served as department chair of the English Department at Tallahassee Community College, in Florida, and authored articles on composition instruction that appeared in several community college journals. He and Missy James coauthored the first edition of Reading Literature and Writing Argument in 2000. He has also written a children's book, I M Natalie Who R U. Now retired, he currently lives 6 months in California and 6 months in France.
Jenny McHenry is a professor of English at Tallahassee Community College, in Florida. She received her bachelor's degree in English from Florida State University and master's degree in English from the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. Her focus in instruction is composition and literature, including multicultural mythology and British literature, with an emphasis on the poetry written in relation to World War I. She has been serving as the course coordinator for Writing about Literature since 2008. She divides her time between Tallahassee, Florida, and Ypres, Belgium.