The Essay Connection

THE ESSAY CONNECTION is a provocative, timely collection of rhetorically arranged essays by professional and student writers. It stimulates critical thinking on ethical, social, and political issues, enabling users to make connections and write with an informed viewpoint. Essays range from the personal to the scientific and cover a variety of modes--narration, process analysis, comparison and contrast, and persuasion--to prompt users' interest in different disciplines and genres. Professionally written essays (by scientists, economists, and journalists, among others) as well as user essays inspire and motivate readers. Unlike excerpts found in other readers, most essays are printed in their entirety, thus serving as better models for user writing. Throughout the text, Bloom offers practical, clear advice on writing that complements the essays. Rich visuals, fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction provide a full set of models to bolster critical thinking, reading, and writing skills. The tenth edition offers 22 new selections to stimulate the readers' interest. An expanded argument casebook as well as new visuals, poems, and works of creative nonfiction and fiction build on the strengths of previous editions. New material on the Book Companion Website strengthens the readers' writing and reading comprehension skills.

Lynn Z. Bloom earned three degrees in English at the University of Michigan, and has an abiding interest in composition and autobiography as subjects for research, teaching, and writing. She has taught and directed writing programs at Butler University (Indianapolis), the University of New Mexico, the College of William and Mary, and Virginia Commonwealth University. She arrived at the University of Connecticut in 1988 as the first holder of an endowed chair, the Aetna Chair of Writing, on the Storrs Campus. In February 2000, she received University of Connecticut's highest academic honor as the newly established Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor. Her research has been supported by the National Council of Teachers of English, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and--for teaching writing in the Agricultural Sciences--by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Bloom has written 17 books, including DOC FOR SPOCK: BIOGRAPHY OF A CONSERVATIVE RADICAL (Bobbs-Merrill, 1972), COMPOSITION STUDIES AS A CREATIVE ART (Utah State, 1988), and THE ESSAY CONNECTION (Cengage). She also has written over 80 articles including, "Freshman Composition as a Middle Class Enterprise" (1996) and "The Essay Canon" (1999), both in COLLEGE ENGLISH, and "Advancing Composition," a history of advanced composition in the twentieth century, in COMING OF AGE: ADVANCED COMPOSITION AND THE RESTRUCTURING OF ENGLISH STUDIES (ed. L. Shamoon and others; Heinemann, 2000).