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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 428
EAN num: 9780312446932
ISBN number: 0312446934
Label: Bedford/St. Martin's
Manufacturer: Bedford/St. Martin's
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 864
Printing Date: December 19, 2006
Publishing house: Bedford/St. Martin's
Sale Popularity Level: 99127
Studio: Bedford/St. Martin's
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Rated by buyers -
The good: The book lavishes the mandatory amount of space on the usual topics such as racism and women, but fortunately reaches out to a larger audience. There is good material on science and technology as well as social sciences and public affairs. There's also a good selection of material of various rhetorical styles of writing. And the discusion questions after the essays generally avoid biasing the discussion. Very useable for class.
The so-so: One reviewer refers to the liberal bent of the texts. And it's abundantly clear that some perspectives receive very privileged status in Fields of Reading. So if you're looking for one version of current ivory tower orthodoxy, here it is. In that sense, there is little diversity in this book, really. So many other possible sources for writing and insights, from Fortune and BusinessWeek to Wired and The Wall Street Journal...I wish the authors had thought a little more outside their box.
The bad: Surprisingly unreliable editing. Incredibly, despite having five academics work on this, they still get important facts flat-out wrong. They apparently confused the number of wounded at Pearl Harbor with the number killed: they cite 1177 deaths in an editorial footnote, whereas knowledgeable writers (Prange) cite 2403 dead and 1178 wounded. And page 234 of my edition refers to the "missile" which hit Nagasaki!
I quote from the instructor's edition for the seventh edition; perhaps they bothered with fact-checking for the new edition. How these errors of fact endured this far is a mystery only the editors can answer. But perhaps the hidden text here is that there are only certain things these academics really care about getting right.
Rated by buyers 
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When you contemplate the long list of standard authors, Nobel Laureates, Pulitzer Prize-winners, worthy of emulation by students, what names spring to the forefront of your mind? Adam Gopnick, Vivian Gornick, Zoe Tracy Hardy? If not, you are out of touch with Ms. Magazine, The Village Voice, and The New Republic, those repositories of great literature, from which these and other authors are selected. You may not realize that "nonverbal courtship patterns in women" is on a par with the Declaration of Independence, or that war, racism, government, big business, fast food and most white people are all bad, or that minorities, women, homosexuals, and New York City are all good. You MIGHT, however, question whether this is really an English 101 textbook, as it pretends, or a social tract promulgating the doctrinaire beliefs of the political left. It is interesting reading, but whether or not one agrees with the selected authors, it is emphatically not a student textbook on writing, and it is not a good choice for that purpose compared to other texts available. It is not what it pretends to be.
Rated by buyers 
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I had to purchase this book for my english course, but after only two weeks of reading and discusion I feel such an empowerment by the selections. I wouldn't be able to choose a favorite author because each one is represented so uniquely by their stories. After my class is over, I look forward to sitting down and reading those that were not assigned and re-reading those icons of society that were picked by my professor. If you want a short introduction to various famous authors then this is definitely a book you will enjoy!
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