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The Contemporary Reader, 9/E
Gary Goshgarian, Northeastern University

ISBN-10: 020556822X
ISBN-13: 9780205568222

Publisher: Longman
Copyright: 2008
Format: Paper; 640 pp
Published: 10/24/2007

Suggested retail price: $63.33
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A best-selling popular culture reader, The Contemporary Reader offers more than 70 readings taken from today’s headlines to inspire students to write on topics that really matter to them. 

 

This collection offers over 70 current, well-written, provocative readings that students can relate to–readings that stimulate class discussion, critical thinking, and writing.  Over 90% of the readings were written within the last five years–more than any other popular culture reader on the market.  The text's ten tightly focused thematic chapters provide balanced readings with multiple perspectives on issues that students care about.

  • Each chapter focuses on an appealing, thought-provoking theme, so students are more likely to be engaged and to develop their own points of view.  Units include
  • Juxtaposed “Viewpoints” essays present multiple sides of an issue in greater depth, so students learn that there is more than one side to most issues–and that there are many ways to present opposing arguments effectively.
  • Essays reflect a wide range of writing styles and genres, including academic essays and dialogues by today's best writers and featuring the work of numerous women and minority authors. Notable authors include: Randall Kennedy, Shelby Steele, Stephanie Coontz, Susan Faludi, William Lutz, Elaine Showalter, Andrew Sullivan, Bill McKibben, and many others.
  • The introduction includes strategies for critical writing, with coverage of pre-writing, audience-awareness, developing a thesis, documenting sources, drafting, editing, revising, and proofreading, as well as critical reading.  Students are offered the tools they need to process the theme-based chapters that follow, as well as guidance on how to respond to the readings thoughtfully and persuasively.
  • Useful writing and discussion exercises follow each reading, including
    • “Freewriting” prompts that encourage students to begin responding immediately to the reading, and take note of their initial ideas and questions.
    • “Critical Reading” questions
    • “Critical Writing” assignments that include “Research and Analysis,” “Exploratory Writing,” and “Persuasive Writing” questions and assignments
    • “Group Projects” that encourage working collaboratively inside and outside of the classroom, with a special emphasis on writing that is community-oriented.
  • "Topical Considerations" questions tie together the readings in each chapter and encourage students to synthesize material from across the readings. 


  • A new chapter (Ch. 5) on climate change brings together a comprehensive range of views, including an essay by Al Gore, a study from the Pew Research Institute, and a debate about the “reality” of global warming, and gives you a complete, authoritative overview of this controversial issue.
  • A new chapter (Ch. 7) on the American university system asks questions like: Who gets into college and why–and who should get into college?  Is America’s “top university”–with big classes and grad student teachers–overrated?  Have colleges become one more big business?  You’ll learn enough to want to know more about the system around you.
  • A new chapter (Ch. 9) on immigration explores this hot button issue, looking both back at historical attitudes toward legal and illegal immigration, and forward at “the next Americans.”  This chapter will allow you to participate thoughtfully in the debate that is central to today’s politics.
  • Over 50 new readings overall–most written after 2005–bring you the most contemporary thinking in a variety of fields.
  • A brand new feature–Reading the Blog–allows you to connect to the freewriting style of this contemporary medium.
  • New Culture Shock features–visuals accompanied by reading and writing activities–help you understand how images can and do influence our opinions, and how to “read” images critically.

Table of Contents

New readings are marked with an asterisk.

Preface.

Introduction: How to Read and Write Critically.

 

What Is Critical Thinking?

Why Read Critically?

How to Read Critically.

Sample Essay for Analysis: “"Now, Cut that Out!,” John Leo.

What is Critical Writing?

Approaching Visuals Critically.


1. Fashion and Flesh: The Images We Project.

 

** The Media Assault on Male Body Image, Brandon Keim

Never Too Buff, John Cloud.

Culture Shock:  Superheroes

What I Think About the Fashion World, Liz Jones

Culture Shock:  Get Real

** The Natural Beauty Myth, Garanice Franke-Ruta

Weighing In, Sandra Hurtes.

My Hips, My Caderas, Alisa Valdes

Reading the Blog:  Eating Disorders: The Numbers

** Weight of the World, Niranjana Iyer

 

VIEWPOINTS:  A Man’s Guide to Slimming Couture, Scott McKeon; Why Do We Get to Laugh at Fat Guys?, Catherine Lawson

Culture Shock:  Norbit



2. Consumer Nation: Wanting It, Selling It

 

**Shop ‘til We Drop?  Robert J. Samuelson

Targeting a New World, Joseph Turow.

** What’s Wrong with Cinderella?  Peggy Orenstein

Culture Shock:  Sphere of Influence: Television Commercials

Lunchbox Hegemony, Dan Cook.

A Brand by Any Other Name, Douglas Rushkoff

Culture Shock:  Branding

** Branded World: The Success of the Nike Logo, Michael Levine

Culture Shock: A Portfolio of Advertisements

**Lux Populi, James B. Twitchell 

 

VIEWPOINTS:  With These Words, I Can Sell You Anything, William Lutz; The Language of Advertising, Charles A. O'Neill.

 
3. It’s All Relative:  The American Family in Flux  

 Family: Idea, Institution, and Controversy, Betty G. Farrell

** Numbers Drop for the Married-with-Children, Blaine Harden (including on-line interview)

** The Decline of Marriage, James Q. Wilson

Culture Shock  Marriage Trends in the United States

** For Better, for Worse, Stephanie Coontz

** The Cultural Devaluation of Child-Rearing, David Popenoe and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead

Culture Shock: God-Ordained Marriage

Did I Miss Something? Lowell Putnam

** A New Generation Is Leading the Way, Donna Jackson Nakazawa

 

VIEWPOINTS:  ** Why the “M” Word Matters to Me, Andrew Sullivan; ** The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage, Margaret Somerville.

Culture Shock:  Gay Marriage

**Reading the Blog:  A really, really long post about gay marriage that does not, in the end, support one side or the other.

 

4.  Remote Control: Television’s Influence

 

Can TV Improve Us? Jane Rosenzweig

** Television Addiction Is No Mere Metaphor, Robert Kubey and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

** Overexposure of Violence in Our Society, David Mullens

Culture Shock:  Turn Off Your TV Week

** The Myth of Media Violence, Andrew O’Hehir

TV's War of Words, Deborah Tannen

** Born Again, Rebecca Raber

The Great TV Debate, Jason Kelly

** Three Cheers for Reality TV, Heather Havrilesky

** The Collapse of Big Media: The Young and the Restless, David T. Z. Mindich

 

VIEWPOINTS:  AAP Discourages Television for Very Young Children, American Academy of Pediatrics; TV Can Be a Good Parent, Ariel Gore

 

5.                  **Climate Control? The Global Warming Debate

 

**Global Warming: Who Loses–and Who Wins?, Gregg Easterbrook

**Global Warming Is an Immediate Crisis, Al Gore

**Culture Shock:  An Inconvenient Truth

**Don’t Believe the Hype, Richard S. Lindzen

**Reading the Blog: Please Stop Talking about the Global Warming Consensus

**Global Warming Heats Up, Jeffrey Kluger

**Culture Shock:  Earth’s Before and After Pics

**ViewPoints:  No Change in Political Climate, Ellen Goodman; On Comparing Global Warming Denial to Holocaust Denial, Dennis Prager

 

6.         Sexual Politics: Diving into the Gender Gap

My Most Attractive Adversary, Madeleine Begun Kane

Male Bashing on TV, Michael Abernethy

**Culture Shock:  Men’s Fault Magazine

The Men We Carry in Our Minds, Scott Russell Sanders

Girls, We Really Are Our Own Worst Enemies, Lyz Baranowski

**In Search of Notorious PhDs, Lindsay Johns

**Culture Shock:  50 Cent

**The End of History, Kay S. Hymowitz

**Reading the Blog:  A Thursday Musing on Anti-Feminist Young Women

**The Science of Difference, Steven Pinker

An Identity Reduced to a Burka, Semeen Issa and Laila Al-Marayati

**Viewpoints:  Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood, Louise Story; Homeward Bound, Linda Hirshman; The Year of Domesticity, David Brooks

 

6.                  The University System: Are We Making the Grade?

**How to Get a College Education, Jeffrey Hart

**A’s for Everyone!, Alicia C. Shepard

**Culture Shock: Drinking Cartoon

**Would Shakespeare Get into Swarthmore?, John Katzman, Andy Lutz, and Erik Olson

**America’s Top University, Stanley N. Katz

**College Makeover, S. Georgia Nugent

**Who Should Get into College?, John H. McWhorter

**What’s Wrong with Vocational School?, Charles Murray

**Higher Ed, Inc., James B. Twitchell

A Real Education, Christina Asquith

**Reading the Blog:  Does College Matter?

**Viewpoints:  Regulating Racist Speech on Campus, Charles R. Lawrence III; Muzzling Free Speech, Harvey A. Silvergate

 

7.                  Race and Racism: Can We Be Color-Blind?

**Inequality, Race, and Remedy, Alan Jenkins

People Like Us, David Brooks

**Culture Shock:  Class and Race in America: The Legacy of Hurricane Katrina

Are You a Terrorist, or Do You Play One on TV?, Laura Fokkena

Racial Profiling Goes Beyond Black and White, Sasha Polakow-Suransky

**In Defense of 24, Emilio Karim Dabul

Please Ask Me “Who,” Not “What” I Am, Jordan Lite

**Getting Under My Skin, Don Terry

**Why I’m Black, Not African American, John H. McWhorter

**Viewpoints: You Have the Right to Remain a Target of Racial Profiling, Eugene Robinson; The Racial Profiling Myth Lives On, Steve Chapman

 

8.                  The Immigration Debate: No More Melting Pot?

Forging a New Vision of America’s Melting Pot, Gregory Rodriguez

**Do We Want Mexifornia?, Victor Davis Hanson

**Culture Shock:  Immigrant Children

**Can We Still Afford to Be a Nation of Immigrants?, David M/ Kennedy

**Reading the Blog:  Immigration Issue Explodes

**Educating Illegal Immigrants, Todd Rosenbaum

**Immigration Quotas vs. Individual Rights: The Moral and Practical Case for Open Immigration, Harry Binswanger

**Culture Shock:  U.S. Census Map

**The Next Americans, Tomas R. Jimenez

**Viewpoints:  A Nation Divided by One Language, James Crawford

My Spanish Standoff, Gabriella Kunz

Credits

Index

 

    A best-selling popular culture reader, The Contemporary Reader offers more than 70 reading selections focused on current cultural issues and organized around ten engaging, provocative topics that engage students to read and write critically.

     

    This reader includes more contemporary selections than any other popular culture reader on the market with over 90% of the readings written in the last five years. The text's ten tightly focused thematic chapters cover a range of writing on interesting issues familiar to students and relevant to our times.

  • 0321323629The Contemporary Reader (with MyCompLab), 8/E
    Goshgarian
    © 2005 | Longman | Paper Bound with PIN; 576 pages | Estimated Availability: 09/19/2007
    ISBN-10: 0321323629 | ISBN-13: 9780321323620
    Brief Description

    • A best-selling text, The Contemporary Reader offers highly engaging readings about current cultural issues. This accessible, wide-ranging, and current essay collection is designed to stimulate strong student response in class and in writing.

    Over 90% of the readings have been written in the last five years. The text's ten tightly focused thematic chapters cover a range of writing on interesting issues familiar to students and relevant to our times.

  • 0321083423The Contemporary Reader, 7/E
    Goshgarian
    © 2002 | Longman | Paper; 608 pages | Instock
    ISBN-10: 0321083423 | ISBN-13: 9780321083425
    Brief Description

The Contemporary Reader, Ninth Edition
Gary Goshgarian

Success starts here.

With a wide-ranging collection of over 90 contemporary readings–50 of them new to this edition, and 90 percent of them written within the last five years–this best-selling anthology is an unbeatable resource for learning how to understand today’s issues and arguments and how to write effectively in the college classroom and beyond. You won’t want to miss Emilio Dabul on why the terrorists on the T.V. show 24 are generally Arabs, or Al Gore on global warming (or a blogger on why he’s just really tired of hearing about the whole subject), or essays about topics such as the corporate hours (and dollars) that go into designing lunchboxes and princess paraphernalia for America’s children, and how violent video games affect our lives. The Contemporary Reader brings you all this and more!

Critical new material available only in this edition

• Three new chapters–on climate change (Does it exist? Can we survive it?), the American university system (Who gets in, and who doesn’t? Who should get in?), and immigration (Does the United States have a special relationship to immigrants? What does that mean?)–bring you face to face with major scientific, ethical, and political arguments.
• Reading the Blog posts throughout the book bring online debates–the reality of our contemporary communication–into the genre mix.
• Culture Shock features offer ads, cartoons, maps, and other images and, by asking pointed questions, help you discover the meanings hidden in the “visual assault” that we cope with every day.

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For Developmental Writing - Readers


  • Eighty Practices
    Hairston
    © 1991 | Longman | Cloth | Instock
    ISBN-10: 0673534227 | ISBN-13: 9780673534224


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