fifty great essays - GBV [PDF]

FIFTY GREAT ESSAYS FOURTH

EDITION

Edited by

Robert DiYanni New York University

Preface

xiii

Introduction: Reading and Writing

1

Gloria Anzaldua

How to Tame a Wild Tongue 30 Kwame Anthony Appiah

Facts on the Ground 42 Francis Bacon

Of Studies 52 Dave Barry

Road Warrior 55 Roland Barthes Toys 5g Lord Chesterfield

Letter to His Son 62 Judith Ortiz Cofer

Casa: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood 64 K.C. Cole

Calculated Risks 70 Charles Darwin

Natural Selection 80 Joan Didion

On Self-Respect 92 Annie Dijlard

Living Like Weasels 97 Frederick Douglass

Learning to Read and Write 102 Brian Doyle

Joyas Voladoras 108

Gretel Ehrlich

About Men 112 Ralph Ellison

living with Music 116 Richard Feynman

The Value of Science

126

Benjamin Franklin

Arriving at Perfection 133 Ellen Goodman

The Company Man 137 Mary Gordon

More Than Just a Shrine—Ellis Island 140 William Hazlitt

On the Pleasure of Hating 146 Linda Hogan

Dwellings 157 Michael Hogan

The Colonel 163 Langston Hughes

Salvation 169 Zora Neale Hurston

How It Feels to Be Colored Me 172 Pico Iyer

Nowhere Man 177 Jamaica Kincaid

On Seeing England for the First Time 181 Martin Luther King, Jr.

Letterfrom Birmingham Jail ig2 Stephen King

Why We Crave Horror Movies 209 Maxine Hong Kingston

On Discovery 212 Abraham Lincoln

The Gettysburg Address 215 Niccolo Machiavelli

The Morals of the Prince 217 Laura Miller

Cat People vs. Dog People

226

N. Scott Momaday The Way to Rainy Mountain

233

Michel de Montaigne Of Smells 240

Nuala O'Faolain Are You Somebody? 243

George Orwell Shooting an Elephant 246

Scott Russell Sanders Under the Influence 254

David Sedaris Cyclops 268

Lee Siegel TheWorldlsAllThatlstheCase 274 Susan Sontag A Woman's Beauty: Put-Down or Power Source? 284

Elizabeth Cady Stanton Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions 288

Brent Staples Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space 292

Jonathan Swift A Modest Proposal 296

Amy Tan Mother Tongue 305

Henry David Thoreau Why I Went to the Woods 312

Sojourner Truth And Ain't I a Woman? 319

Alice Walker Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self 321

E.B. White Once More to the Lake 329

Mary Wollstonecraft A Vindication of the Rights of Woman 336

Virginia Woolf The Death of the Moth 340 Credits Index

345