Description

Now available for the first time in a Brief Edition, this classic thematic anthology has long been hailed for its exceptionally rich collection of essays, memoirs, stories, poems, and plays, and for its inclusion of classic and contemporary images.

 

Now available in a more affordable and accessible format, The Conscious Reader, Brief Edition brings together over 85 readings representing a wide array of culturally diverse authors and fascinating topics, a broad range of academic disciplines, and a unique mix of genres.  Authors range from Plato, Shakespeare, and Chief Seattle to Bob Dylan and Tony Kushner, with Notebook clusters bringing together related readings at the beginning of each unit.  Brief, flexible apparatus includes an introduction to each theme and helpful headnotes, discussion questions, and writing assignments for each selection. 

Features

• Selections are grouped by genre—Personal Reminiscences, Essays, Fiction, Poetry, and Drama—within 9 universal themes that move students from questions about self-discovery and relationships to larger issues of culture, science and technology, globalism and nationalism, and the goals of human freedom and dignity.
• Over 30 black-and-white photos provide challenging visual prompts for class discussion and writing.
• An alternate rhetorical table of contents makes this a flexible collection for any teaching approach.
• A detailed Instructor's Manual includes a discussion of every selection in the text.
• Notebooks—collections of two or more related readings—introduce each thematic unit and grant more attention to the interrelatedness of texts, topics and images, providing opportunities for students to synthesize texts.
• A provocative section on Globalism, Nationalism, and Cultural Identity reflects current social, educational, and moral concerns regarding the relationship between the individual, national government, and the world.    

Table of Contents

Rhetorical Contents

Preface

THE SEARCH FOR SELF       

 

NOTEBOOK

CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD,   Praetor Violet

ARYEH LEV STOLLMAN, Die Grosse Liebe  (including Leander photo)

URSULA  MELENDI, All of Heaven for Love

 

PERSONAL REMINISCENCES

ANNIE DILLARD, So This Was Adolescence

GREG GRAFFIN, Anarchy in the Tenth Grade

NANCY MAIRS, On Being a Cripple

JORGE LUIS BORGES, Borges and I

ZORA NEALE HURSTON, How it Feels to Be Colored Me

  FICTION

ERNEST HEMINGWAY, Indian Camp

SANDRA CISNEROS, Hips

 

POETRY

DYLAN THOMAS, The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower

DENISE LEVERTOV, In Mind

ANNE SEXTON, Her Kind

CARL DENNIS, The God Who Loves You

 

PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS: PARENTS AND CHILDREN NOTEBOOK

THOMAS LYNCH, The Way We Are

JUDITH ORTIZ COFER, Casa: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood

 

ESSAYS

THE KORAN, Sura 12. Joseph

 

FICTION

EDWIDGE DANTICAT, Selection from Breath, Eyes, Memory

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS, The Use of Force

ELIZABETH SPENCER, Instrument of Destruction

 

POETRY

BOB DYLAN, It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)

  PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS: MEN AND WOMEN  

NOTEBOOK

LEO BRAUDY, Arms and the Man

JARED DIAMOND, What are Men Good For?

 

ESSAYS

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

VIRGINIA WOOLF, The Angel in the House

MARGARET ATWOOD, Fiction: Happy Endings

 

FICTION

KATE CHOPIN              A Respectable Woman

 

POETRY

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds (Sonnet 116)

WILLIAM BLAKE, The Garden of Love

RITA DOVE, Beauty and the Beast

GREGORY CORSO, Marriage

E. E. CUMMINGS, I like my body when it is with your

 

THE CULTURAL TRADITION: POPULAR CULTURE

 

NOTEBOOK

GLORIA STEINEM, Wonder Woman

MARINA WARNER, Fantasy’s Power and Peril

 

ESSAYS

ROGER EBERT, Great Movies

ERIC SCHLOSSER, Fast Food Nation

RANDALL KENNEDY, The N-Word

JULIAN JOHNSON, Who Needs Classical Music? 

 

POETRY

SONIA SANCHEZ, A Poem for Ella Fitzgerald

 

THE CULTURAL TRADITION: ART, THE ARTIST, AND SOCIETY

 

NOTEBOOK

V. S. NAIPAUL. Two Worlds: Nobel Lecture 2001

STEPHEN KING, Selection from On Writing

 

ESSAYS

E.M. FORSTER, Art for Art’s Sake

CRISTIAN AMIGO, Intervention #1: Musical Openings

JOHN BERGER, Uses of Photography

JORN JACOB ROHWER, The Art of Conversation: How Spoken Words Turn Into Writing, and Arthur Miller: I’ve Never Been a Hero

 

FICTION

WILLA CATHER, The Sculptor’s Funeral

 

POETRY

CATE MARVIN, Ocean is a Word in this Poem

WALT WHITMAN, Poets to Come

 

SCIENCE, THE ENVIRONMENT, AND THE FUTURE  

NOTEBOOK

HENRY DAVID THOREAU, Why I Went Out into the Woods

EDWARD O. WILSON, A Letter to Thoreau

 

PERSONAL REMINISCENCES

FREEMAN DYSON, Can Science Be Ethical?

 

ESSAYS

ALAN TENNANT, Great Plains of the Arctic

MATT RIDLEY, Free Will

NILES ELDREDGE, Creationism Isn’t Science

BARBARA GOLDSMITH, Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie

SHIREEN LEE, The New Girls Network: Women, Technology, and Feminism

 

POETRY

AFFONSO ROMANO DeSANT’ANNA, Letter to the Dead

 

 

FREEDOM AND HUMAN DIGNITY

 

NOTEBOOK

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.,  I Have a Dream

DOROTHY DAY, Martin Luther King

 

ESSAYS

THOMAS JEFFERSON, The Declaration of Independence

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON AND LUCRETIA COFFIN MOTT, Seneca Falls Convention

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, The Gettysburg Address

WILLIAM FAULKNER, Nobel Prize Award Speech

GEORGE ORWELL, The Principles of Newspeak

CHIEF SEATTLE, Speech on the Signing of the Treaty of Port Elliott

PLATO, The Crito 

MARY GORDON, A Moral Choice

 

POETRY

REYNOLDS PRICE, Tom, Dying of AIDS

MATTHEW ARNOLD, Dover Beach

 

 

GLOBALISM, NATIONALISM, AND CULTURAL IDENTITY

 

NOTEBOOK

ADAM GOPNIK, The City and the Pillars

ANTHONY SHADID, Legacy of the Prophet

ELIE WIESEL, Why I am an American

 

PERSONAL REMINISCENCES

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ, Hispanic

 

ESSAYS

SUSAN SONTAG, Regarding the Pain of Others

JAMES BALDWIN, The Discovery of What it Means to be an American

CARSON McCULLERS, Loneliness … an American Malady

NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, Of Cruelty and Clemency, and Whether It Is Better to Be Loved or Feared

 

DRAMA

TONY KUSHNER, Homebody/Kabul

 

POETRY

TED KOOSER, Prisoners from the Front

KATHA POLLITT, Night Subway

 

THE EXAMINED LIFE: EDUCATION

 

NOTEBOOK

MALCOLM X, A Homemade Education

ANTON CHEKHOV, The Bet

 

ESSAYS

REYNOLDS PRICE, The Great Imagination Heist

JOAN E. HARTMAN, What We Did and Why We Did It

LEWIS THOMAS, Humanities and Science

KEVIN FINNERAN, The Merits of Meritocracy

GEOFFREY NUNBERG , Teaching Students to Swim in the Online Sea

 

POETRY

LANGSTON HUGHES,   Theme for English B