Growing Up and Growing Older, Women and Men, Money and Work, Peace and War, and Varieties of Protest: we have organized the third edition of Literature and Society, as we did its predecessors, around five major social issues or themes and have selected for each theme literary works—stories, poems, plays, and works of nonfiction—that embody a diversity of perspectives and bring to life a variety of experiences.

Growing Up and Growing Older are, of course, universal human experiences. But they are also profoundly particular social experiences, different, for example, for people of different genders, races, or social classes, as the wide variety of literary works in this section reveal. On the theme of Women and Men, the selections range from love poems to poems of protest, from "problem" drama to satiric essay and comic fiction, but all illuminate the ways society shapes an individual’s experience and identity as a woman or as a man. The issues involving Money and Work are nearly universal in human experience, but, as the literature in this section illustrates, the social conditions within which a person labors can make work fulfilling or alienating, exciting or tedious, life sustaining or life destroying; and the manner in which a society uses and distributes wealth shapes the lives of those who have money and those who do not in subtle as well as obvious ways. We devote a section to Peace and War because war and the need for peace are so central to modern existence; even those who have never experienced war directly are profoundly affected by the legacy of past wars, by the militarization of culture, and, still, by the nightmare prospect of nuclear war. Finally, in every society, people have engaged in protest, whether spontaneous or planned, whether as individuals or in groups, against what they have perceived as injustice; the selections that explore Varieties of Protest are not simply works of protest but works about protest, about the act of standing up (or, perhaps, sitting down) for what one believes is right.

The stories, poems, plays, and works of nonfiction grouped around these five themes provide a broad and accessible introduction to the ways literature can enrich one’s understanding of self and society. The themes, of course, overlap. Literary works are complex; they are rarely about just one thing. Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman is about growing up and growing older as well as money and work; Pamela Zoline’s science fiction story "The Heat Death of the Universe" explores relationships between women and men as well as a very interesting variety of protest. The thematic categories are meant not to limit but to stimulate thinking and discussion.

Within each thematic category, Literature and Society offers a heterogeneous selection of literary works, representing a great many different experiences and perspectives. We have included a full range of selections by women, working-class, gay or lesbian, ethnic, and other writers who have traditionally found little welcome in the canon of works considered most worthy of academic study, but whose presence in a literature course will not only mean class discussions that are more varied and more exciting, but also an introduction to literature that truly reflects the extraordinary diversity of the society students live in. Roughly half of the selections in this third edition of Literature and Society are by women and over one third by "minorities," both figures still unusually high for an anthology of this kind. We have not only maintained a strong commitment to the inclusion of African American writers, but, since the first edition, have increased representation by Asian American, Native American, and Latino and Latina writers. Alongside a well-known work by Yeats or Hemingway or Faulkner, students will find an important but less known work on the same theme by Alice Childress or Janice Mirikitani or Jimmy Santiago Baca. The forty stories, two hundred thirteen poems, ten plays, and nineteen works of nonfiction included will enable students to hear a wide range of voices, differing from one another in gender, age, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, and social class.

The editorial apparatus of Literature and Society is designed to help students understand both the social meanings and the formal elements of the literary works included. Though we have organized the book by theme rather than by literary genre and literary concept, we give serious attention to matters of form and to the ways literary technique serves larger purposes—the re-creation of experience, the testing of ideas, the exploration of social issues. Four detailed chapters—on fiction, on poetry, on drama, and on nonfiction prose—introduce key literary concepts and approaches and develop them through numerous examples. A long chapter on "Literature and the Writing Process" offers a number of techniques to help students think about their own writing process and uses sample papers, paragraphs, and journal entries to guide students through the stages of that process, from generating ideas to revising and editing.

A preface to each of the five thematic sections introduces the theme that unifies the section and raises some of the key questions the works included explore. Study and discussion questions, suggestions for writing, and author biographies accompany all short stories, plays, and works of nonfiction, and about one fourth of the poems in each section. The study and discussion questions are more or less objective, sometimes very specific; they lead students toward a basic understanding of the works. The suggestions for writing (meant to take from five to thirty minutes each) are more subjective and open-ended, intended to stimulate thinking about the larger meanings of the works; they encourage students to explore their own responses in creative ways and to articulate their own opinions. At the end of each thematic section are a number of suggested topics for longer papers, usually involving a comparison of two or more works; these questions offer students the chance to integrate what they have learned.

Despite its careful structure, Literature and Society is quite flexible. Though designed specifically for an introductory literature course, the book could easily be used in a writing course, for its five thematic sections and many suggestions for writing can generate a wide range of formal and informal writing assignments; and its process-oriented chapter, "Literature and the Writing Process," is detailed and thorough. There are far more selections in Literature and Society than one could ever use in one or even two semesters of a literature or writing course, so the instructor will find a great deal of freedom to adapt the text to his or her own purposes. A careful mix of well-known, canonical works and equally teachable and formally interesting noncanonical works invites the instructor to combine the familiar and the new in any proportion desired. As well as selecting among the works gathered around each theme, one might decide to choose among themes, opting for a more thorough exploration of any one or more of the five offered. And should an instructor wish to organize a course by literary genre rather than by theme, there is an alternate table of contents. However it is used, we think Literature and Society introduces students to a wide and exciting variety of literature in a way that will consistently engage their interest and that will help them understand that literature is about the very things—money, work, growing up, or what it means to be male or female—that matter in their own lives.