Popular Writing in America: The Interaction of Style and Audience - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195035895 ISBN 13: 9780195035896

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1985

Synopsis

Used for nearly two decades in schools nation-wide, this unique anthology offers provocative examples of successful, influential American writing drawn from advertising, the press, popular magazines, bestsellers, classics, film and television, suiting a variety of classroom purposes--topics for lively class discussions, practical models for student composition, and imaginative texts for literary study. The fifth edition places a new emphasis on multicultural perspectives on the media, and offers an infusion of new selections by a diversity of authors, both within and outside the established literary canon.

As always, every selection is connected either stylistically or thematically with one or more of the other selections, and an expanded "Table of Linked Selections" follows the "Rhetorical Table of Contents". This feature encourages readers to discover the different ways the same subject can be treated by different writers or by different media--for example, how staff writers for Time and Newsweek each handled the space shuttle disaster in January 1986, how a major author like Stephen Crane used his personal experience of a disaster at sea to write both a newspaper report and a classic American short story, or how Ernest Hemingway's famous short story, "Soldier's Home," was transformed into a film script.
Current and comprehensive, Popular Writing in America offers a unique method of teaching composition, one that appeals to students and teachers alike.

About this title

About the Author

Donald McQuade is at University of California, Berkeley. Robert Atwan is at Seton Hall University.

Review

"Excellent book for showing which texts 'work' in popular resources."--Cynthia Ryan, University of Alabama at Birmingham

"One of the best texts available in terms of writing examples and cultural relevance. My favorite qualities include the historical comparisons that are possible and the variety of genres featured."--Brett Foster, Eastern Nazarene College

"I am particularly pleased with the diverse and historical approach to American culture."--Michele Molk, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown

"Very well done! Certainly a positive for all students. Not to be missed. The readings on the Press are exceptional."--Ed Rooney, Loyola University

"This is an excellent and varied collection of readings that we are likely to put on the adoption list for our sophomore-level Topics in Writing course."--Christy Friend, University of Texas at Austin

"An excellent introduction to non-academic writing in the United States for both readers and writers."--Tom Carpenter, University of Arkansas at Monticello

"An excellent text that in its fifth edition has become more comprehensive and diverse and, therefore, even more timely."--Donald Gilzinger, Suffolk Community College

"An exciting and unusual mix of texts, unusual because the book offers words caught in the process, not of composition, but of living, as writers struggle to attract, inform and amuse readers, to shake them, basically, out of their inattentive doldrums and feel their words."--Anthony DiMattio,
New York Institute of Technology

"The best reference book that I've seen to inform our international communications majors about our American culture."--Robert W. Larson, Pittsburg University

"Well structured use of advertising issues."--Cassandra Reese, E.W. Scripps School of Journalism

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1985
• ISBN 10: 0195035895
• ISBN 13: 9780195035896
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 696
• Editor: Robert Atwan