Includes 86 readings chosen to stimulate student discussion and writing about eleven socially relevant themes -- each intellectually, politically, and emotionally engaging:

• Growing Up and Growing Older.
• Education.
• Mass Culture.
• Gender.
• Race and Ethnicity.
• Money, Work, and Social Class.
• Science and Technology.
• Nature/The Environment.
• War.
• Protest and Change.
• Art and the Artist.

Strongly emphasizes social criticism and alternative viewpoints --in a way that relates to personal experience and can engage even the most uninterested student.

Mirrors the diversity of late twentieth century America in terms of race/ethnicity, sex, social class, age, and sexual orientation.

• Over half the selections are by women.
• Over one-third are by people of color.
• Represents gay and lesbian, working-class, and other writers often excluded.

Includes a wide range of nonfiction prose.

• From varieties of autobiography and memoir, to editorial and feature journalism, to personal/argumentative essays, to humor and satire.
• Outlines the basic issues that emerge in the particular section and suggests how each reading might shed light on the issue and may connect to students' lives.

Offers detailed Study and Discussion Questions that take students through each reading from start to finish -- asking them to notice formal as well as thematic features.

Provides Suggestions for Writing that include both analytical and creative exercises and that stimulate students to relate what they have read to their own lives.

Contains biographical headnotes that introduce and situate each reading.

Includes thorough but unobtrusive explanatory footnotes for obscure references, foreign language words and phrases, etc.

Provides an Alternate Table of Contents by rhetorical mode or subgenre.