Thanks to Aimee Carrillo-Rowe, Daniel Gross, Megan Knight, Cinda Coggins Mosher, and Mary Trachsel for the following reviews.

Readers for 10:001 and 10:003:

Conversations (Selzer & Carpini; Pearson Longman, $56)

Advantages: A popular choice among Rhetoric instructors since it was added to the approved textbook list, Conversations is a flexible, uncluttered reader. It is arranged in a way that works well with the department's emphases on controversy and rhetorical principles; for example, there are two tables of contents––one arranged by subject matter and the other by rhetorical features such as "Analysis" and "Writing from Sources." Because the Rhetoric curriculum stresses the importance of considering multiple perspectives on a given issue, the text's broad coverage of many controversial issues works well with the types of major assignments often assigned in Rhetoric courses. The six general topics covered in the text include "Education," "Media Matters,” “Gender,” “Revolutions in Marriage and Family,” “Civil Liberties and Civic Responsibilities,” and “Science and Society.” Each general topic is divided into smaller controversies, each of which contains at least four different perspectives on the issue. "Civil Liberties and Civil Rights,” for example, considers multiple perspectives on the requirements of democratic citizenship; the scope of government regulation on information, weapons, tobacco, and food; and the relationship between social class and issues of crime and punishment. Essays, cartoons, advertisements, speeches, letters to the editor, and internet texts are featured in the reader, ranging in length from one to thirty pages. The fact that many entries are under five pages appeals to some instructors who enjoy covering many essays.

Disadvantages: Some instructors find the shorter essays limiting. Others dislike the "evenhanded" approach to controversy and miss a consistent critical cultural studies perspective.

In Context (Feldman, Downs & McManus; Pearson Longman, $51)

Advantages: This versatile reader is made up of five units that cover a broad range of current social issues. The first unit walks students through an initial short reading, introducing a useful set of rhetorical terms and concepts that are utilized in the writing prompts and other apparatus throughout the book. The emphasis on rhetorical analysis, reading contextually, and relating positions to one another and to the surrounding context is appropriate to the departmental curriculum. The glossary on genres in this unit could come in handy early in a Rhetoric course. There's also an appendix at the end of the book that provides helpful hints about reading and research strategies, and offers some small-group activities related to the composing process. The other four units are made up of sets of readings on a given theme, followed by case studies that are composed of more tightly-clustered readings on a specific controversy related to that theme. For example, Unit II is a discussion on "Searching for Authenticity," which asks questions about the distinctions between what's "real" and what's not, offering selections from writers like Jon Spayde, bell hooks, and Gloria Anzaldúa. The accompanying case study focuses on the timely issue of ownership of music, examining a recent lawsuit and including press releases from the bands involved, news stories, an excerpt from the 1976 U.S. Copyright Act.

Disadvantages: For some instructors this reader might be too tightly packaged.

Now and Then (Stanford; McGraw Hill, $37)

Advantages: This compact reader is new to the approved textbook list for 2006. As the title suggests, Now and Then explores controversies in terms of both past and present, considering historical context as well as contemporary views on a given issue. The first section of the book offers tools for critical reading and thinking, and discusses the processes and aims of writing. The second section of the book examines nine controversial issues, including the immigrant experience, redefining gender and marriage, and race and privilege in college admissions. The readings are tightly clustered around particular issues, making the book well-suited to the department’s controversy curriculum. For example, Chapter 4, “Finding Our Way: The American Dream after 9/11,” begins with two foundational readings (Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and Bill Clinton’s “A New Sense of Responsibility”); the rest of the chapter is dedicated to exploring two specific questions, “What Does the Flag Mean?” and “How Do We Balance Freedom and Security?” The chapter also includes an interesting series of visual arguments involving the American flag for students to consider.

Disadvantages: many of the readings are under five pages, which some instructors may find limiting.

Readers for 10:002 and 10:003

Argument in America (Selzer; Pearson Longman, $27)

Advantages: this pared-down, inexpensive reader is divided into six sections, focusing on controversial issues such as the environment, censorship, and civil disobedience. Many of the readings are classic texts: “The Declaration of Independence,” Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s “The Seneca Falls Declaration,” Frederick Douglass’s “What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July?” and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” The book also offers some material on visual arguments and an appendix of readings on argument (such as Kenneth Burke’s “Rhetoric––Old and New”). The book is appealing to instructors who would like students to explore the historical foundations of contemporary controversies before conducting current research.

Disadvantages: in general the readings are loosely grouped, rather than focusing closely on specific controversies. Some instructors may feel that this streamlined book simply does not provide enough options, particularly when it comes to more current readings.

Convergences (Atwan; Bedford/St. Martin’s, $54)

Advantages: Convergences is a unique textbook particularly appropriate for instructors interested in teaching visual rhetorics and postmodern thematics––real vs. artificial, surface vs. depth, the medium is the message and so on––while reading well-chosen material. The prevailing media are the memoir/personal essay (Judith Ortiz Cofer, David Sedaris, Gordon Parks), and the photograph (Cindy Sherman, Joseph Rodriguez), while some effort is made to link discussions to online sources, including one website designed especially to accompany the reader. Most of the material, such as a section on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, lends itself to our controversy-based curriculum, but in most cases supplementary research would be needed to make a major assignments fly (not necessarily a bad thing). Unlike most readers, the questions raised at the end of each section are genuinely thought-provoking and doable. Convergences will provoke exciting class discussions and creative projects that take students beyond the material presented.

Disadvantages: a weak apparatus designed around the key terms "message," "method," "medium," and a dearth of serious theoretical essays that could both challenge the students and make the editor's take on modernism/ postmodernism more transparent. This book may be better suited to experienced teachers of Rhetoric.

Rereading America (Colombo, Cullen & Lisle; Bedford/St. Martin’s, $50)

Advantages: Rereading America is thematized through the notion that several "myths" are central to US American culture: the nuclear family, the melting pot, the American dream, education as empowerment, gender as biologically determined, America as "free." The book is oriented toward incoming college students and links this positionality to the importance of becoming critical thinkers (looking for underlying assumptions and ideas, seeing issues from multiple perspectives). It provides explicit instructions on how to read critically, mark up a book, ask questions of a text, apply the readings to one's own experiences, and examine the underlying purposes of texts. A website is available for each chapter and on various related topics (affirmative action, class, consumerism, entertainment, drugs, the environment), which can facilitate students’ introduction to conducting outside research.

Disadvantages: the book's "American" focus in an era of increasing globalization may feel constricting. Students may react against the book’s overall emphasis on debunking myths; politically progressive students who want to do cultural criticism might feel that the book leaves them nothing to say, while conservative students may react against the book's leftist "bias."

Rhetorics for 10:001 and 10:003

Good Reasons (Faigley & Selzer; Pearson Longman, $40)

By stressing the rhetorical situation and the audience, this rhetoric avoids complicated schemes and terminology in favor of providing students with the practical means to find "good reasons" for the positions they want to advocate to their audiences. Good Reasons is distinctive in its emphasis on visual persuasion and the presentation of arguments in various media, including electronic media. It includes a thorough discussion of visual design and how good document design can support good reasons, as well as an introduction to arguments on the Web. Good Reasons is also distinctive in considering narratives as an important aspect of argument.

Rhetorics for 10:002 and 10:003

Everything's an Argument (Lunsford & Ruszkiewicz; Bedford/St. Martin’s, $35)

As the title suggests, this breezy rhetoric goes beyond pro/con to show that argument is everywhere: in essays, poems, advertisements, cartoons, posters, prayers, websites, and other electronic environments. The texts is student friendly, with explanations in simple, everyday language, many brief examples, and a minimum of technical terminology. Particularly useful for our curriculum is the treatment of both written and spoken argument, including illuminating contrasting passages designed to demonstrate some of the differences.

They Say, I Say (Graff & Birkenstein/W.W. Norton, $14)

This book, a “rhetoric,” is new to the textbook list this year and so is untried in the Rhetoric classroom.  It is designed to introduce entry-level college students to academic discourse by inviting them to join in the “academic conversation,” the book’s central metaphor.  Graff and Birkenstein accompany their invitation with explicit accounts of the rhetorical “moves” made in academic conversations, and they invite students to try out these moves by using “templates.”  The book’s title refers to one of the first templates presented in the book, intended to help students understand that academic conversations acknowledge what others have said and are saying:  “They say_________, but I say________.”  Other “moves” include summarizing “Her point is___________,” quoting “As he himself puts it___________,” connecting the parts “As a result,___________,” and metacommentary “In other words,____________.” 

Additional materials in the book include a brief appendix of templates for entering class discussions, three model essays that exemplify uses of the various rhetorical moves in academic conversations, and finally, an index of the templates.  While the template approach of this book is formulaic, it is a method that is genuinely helpful to students, like many of those who populate our Rhetoric classes, who are unfamiliar with academic discourse and the purposes it serves.