Essay Connection: Readings for Writers

This collection of 83 rhetorically arranged essays offers strong guidance to student writers. Part I presents clear, practical advice on the art of writing; Part II helps students determine ideas in a sequence; Part III focuses on clarifying ideas; Part IV shows students how to write direct and indirect arguments; and Part V provides a controversy in context. The writing process is consistently reinforced throughout the text in chapter introductions, in its organization, and in some of the selections themselves.

Introductions to the nine rhetorical chapters discuss purposes, uses, forms, and strategies. Supporting apparatus includes chapter introductions, biographical introductions, study questions, writing assignments, an appendix on finding and evaluating sources on the Internet, and a glossary.

• New! Thirty-five selections new to the Seventh Edition are selected for their high literary quality and their lively, timely, and provocative content
• New! An argument casebook, Controversy in Context: Implications of World Terrorism and World Peace presents 17 readings (true stories, poetry, and essays from a political scientist, a philosopher, a novelist, a critic, and a historian) that help students focus on the most significant issues of the 21st century
• New! Thought-provoking visual images designed to draw students into the text and promote critical thinking include photographs that complement writing assignments and discussion questions.
• Extensive supporting apparatus includes biographical Headnotes preceding each selection, which also emphasize the particular author's writing process, and Study Questions and Suggestions for Writing after each selection and chapter, which prompt many possible types of responses and points of view.
• Student writing samples (featured in 11 complete essays and in excerpts from 13 notebooks) provide students with realistic models from their peers and present multiple drafts of a single student's essay, showing the writing process at work.
• Thematic connections among the readings in most chapters encourage students to think critically and write with a more informed point of view.