Short Takes, 11th edition
Published by Pearson (June 18, 2012) © 2013
- Elizabeth Penfield
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This lively collection of fifty short, readable selections by both student and professional writers provides useful models of the rhetorical modes.
In addition to familiar names such as Anna Quindlen, Richard Rodriguez, Dave Barry, and William Raspberry, this reader features many fresh voices such as Sandra Steingraber, Thomas Sowell, Michael Chabon, and Gina Barreca. Detailed chapter openers offer strategies for using each rhetorical mode, including short examples from the readings within each chapter. Headnotes for each essay give a brief biography of its author, explain its context, and pinpoint one of the writer’s techniques. Questions on “Organization and Ideas” and “Technique and Style” and many suggestions for writing journal entries and essays follow each selection. Each chapter ends with additional writing assignments that ask students to compare two or more of the essays.
· “Freeze Frame: Reading and Writing,” a brief section that introduces students to the principles of critical reading and writing, opens the text.
· Fifty-seven short, engaging, accessible reading selections are included, along with helpful introductions to each rhetorical pattern.
· Headnotes for each selection describe the author, give some context for the reading, and point to at least one notable stylistic feature of the selection.
· Includes questions on organization, ideas, technique, and style after each selection, engaging students to think critically about the readings.
· For each selection, a number of topics for writing journal entries and essays are provided.
· Each chapter concludes with more writing suggestions that encourage students to compare two or more of the selections in the book and also to practice writing in each rhetorical mode.
· Selections in Chapter 10, “For Further Reading: Two Topics, Six Views," presents six essays with different views on two topics: place and censorship and education. Students can use these essays to practice how to synthesize differing perspectives and information so that they can respond critically and construct their own arguments.
· An alternate thematic table of contents is provided.
· The Instructor’s Manual includes key words and phrases for each essay, suggestions for group work, and additional writing suggestions keyed to the thematic table of contents.
* Shorter and more readable. All explanations have been tightened and made clearer while the number of essays remains almost the same.
* “Freeze Frame” models critical reading and writing by annotating a sample paragraph with marginal comments
* Eighteen new essays focus on engaging topical subjects ranging from popular culture and media to science and technology.
* Strategies for writing include guidelines for journaling, clustering, timed writing, asking questions, listing, and working in groups.
* Examples clarify distinctions between revising, editing, and proofreading–and offer reasons for why writers make changes.
* Revised chapter introductions focus more clearly on organization.
* New images–cartoons and comic–comment on and enhance the essays, showing how the same analytical skills can be applied to other forms of expression.
* New readings reflect diverse perspectives, including race, culture, technology, and gender.
* A more inviting layout makes reading easier and emphasis clearer.
Freeze Frame: Reading and Writing
Chapter 1: Description and Narration
Lori Jakiela, “You’ll Love the Way We Fly”
Kelly Ruth Winter, "Tommy”
Mary Roach, “A Terrible Thing to Waste: You Do Not Need Brains To Go To The Harvard Brain Bank, Only A Brain”
* Alex Abadi, “What Is So Close, Yet So Far, Alex?” (student selection)
Flavius Stan, “The Night of Oranges” (student selection)*
* Matthew Gooi, Coming to America
Magdoline Asfahani, “Time to Look and Listen” (student selection)
* Ann Telnaes, And Women Are Created Equal (editorial cartoon)
Chapter 2: Example
Lena Williams, “A Black Fan of Country Music Finally Tells All”
* Gina Barreca, Why English Professors Love Country Music
Stacey Wilkins, “Stop Ordering Me Around”
Allison Silverman, “Have Fun”
* Richard O’Mara, Baltimore Tales
Chapter 3: Definition
Diane Ackerman, “Chocolate Equals Love”
Henry Han Xi Lau, “I Was a Member of the Kung Fu Crew” (student selection)
William Raspberry, “The Handicap of Definition”
* Derek Jensen, High on Progress
* Rick Kirkman, Jerry Scott, “Baby Blues” (cartoon)
Chapter 4: Comparison, Contrast, Division, and Classification
Lynnika Butler, “Living on Tokyo Time”
* Frank Deford, Watching the Clock: A Sport All Its Own
Denise Leight, “Playing House” (student selection)
* Wise Geek, What Are the Different Types of Social Networks
* John C. Abell, Five Reasons Why E-Books Aren’t There Yet
Frank Deford, “Who’s Watching? Reality TV and Sports”
* David Pierce, Top Tablet Comparison: iPad vs. Xoom vs. TouchPad vs. Playbook
Russell Baker, “The Plot Against People”
* Mike Twohy, “Very, Sort of, Very Sort of” (cartoon)
* Steve Kelley and Jeff Parker, “Dustin” (cartoon)
Chapter 5: Process
Laura Carlson, “Runner” (student selection)
* Kate Hopper,Becoming a Sanvicenteña: Five Stages
Dave Barry, “Independence Day”
Naomi Wolf, “A Woman’s Place”
Chapter 6: Cause and Effect
Bjorn Skogquist, “Tiffany Stephenson – An Apology” (student selection)
Oliver Sacks, “When Music Heals Body and Soul”
* Alexandar Reinaldo Perez, “On the Gettysburg Address” (student selection)
Andrew Sullivan, “We Have Retreated into the iWorld”
Visual: John Deering, “The Class of 2008” (cartoon)
Chapter 7: On Using Argument
Barbara Ehrenreich, “Dance, Dance, Revolution”
* Patricia J. Williams, “Freshman Specimen”
Anne Applebaum, “Veiled Insult”
Jay Bookman, “Guest Workers and the U.S. Heritage”
Robert J. Samuelson, “We Don’t Need ‘Guest Workers’”
Darrin Bell, “All These Illegal’s,” (comic strip)
Steve Kelley, “Americans and Jobs” (cartoon)
* Sandra Steingraber, “When Cowboys Cry: In Today’s Wild West, Energy Corporations are the New Outlaws”
* Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association, “Protecting the Environment”
* Mindy Lubber, “Drilling Down Deep”
* Signe Wilkinson “Would Madam Care for Water?” (cartoon)
* EnergyTomorrow.org, “With Smart Policies, Secure Supplies From the United States and Canada Could Provide 92% of America’s Liquid Fuel Needs by 2030.” (ad)
Chapter 8: Multiple Modes: Two Topics, Six Views
Place
* Johon Wideman, Life in ‘My Town”
* Stuart Overlin, Paducah, Kentucky
Mario Suarez, El Hoyo
Freedom, Censorship, and Education
Ursula LeGuin, "Whose Lathe?"
Anna Quindlen, “With a No. 2 Pencil, Delete”
Michael Chabon, “Solitude and the Fortress of Youth”
Credits
Index of Authors, Essays, and Terms
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