This brief edition of a groundbreaking textbook addresses the need for college students to develop critical reading, writing, and thinking skills for self-defense in the contentious arena of American civic rhetoric. Designed for first-year or more advanced composition and critical thinking courses, it is one-third shorter than the original edition, more affordable for students, and easier for teachers to cover in a semester or quarter. It incorporates up-to-date new readings and analysis of controversies like the growing inequality of wealth in America and the debates in the 2008 presidential campaign, expressed in opposing viewpoints from the political left and right. Exercises help students understand the ideological positions and rhetorical patterns that underlie such opposing views. Widely debated issues of whether objectivity is possible and whether there is a liberal or conservative bias in news and entertainment media, as well as in education itself, are foregrounded as topics for rhetorical analysis.

About the Author
Donald Lazere is Professor Emeritus at California Polytechnic State University and is the editor of American Media and Mass Culture: Left Perspectives.

Reviews

"Lazere has given us a thoughtful, beautifully organized, and eminently user-friendly book that enables teachers to [give] their students a way in to some of the most important and contentious public controversies of our time."
--Gerald Graff, Professor of English and Education, University of Illinois at Chicago

"Don Lazere has produced one of the most intelligent, relevant, and important books in composition studies in the last decade. Give this to every student, adult, and citizen who believes that learning, writing, and democracy mutually inform each other."
--Henry A. Giroux, McMaster University

"What a smart book! Here is an intelligent rhetoric text that honestly faces the politics of our times. Writing teachers will benefit from the tools Lazere provides and students will benefit by becoming better writers and more informed readers of their society."
--Ira Shor, Professor of Education, CUNY Graduate Center

"Lazere's [text] is heaven-sent, and will provide a crucial link in the chain of understanding how conflicts are structured and, most important, how they can be rationally addressed-a healthy antidote to the skepticism that has become so pervasive in academic life."
--Alan Hausman, Professor of Philosophy, Hunter College, CUNY

Book Information
ISBN 9781594517105
Author Donald Lazere
Format Paperback
Page Count 398
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Inc
Weight(grams) 725g