Thirty-Eight New Reading Selections. Many of the new readings are on contemporary issues and by contemporary authors, including selections by Natalie Kusz, Gretel Ehrlich, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Michiko Kakutani, Garrison Keillor, Deborah Tannen, and Malcolm Gladwell.

Literary Selections. A short story or poem has been added to each of the chapters. These selections include works by Alberto Riós, Lee Abbott, Amy Hempel, Naomi Shihab Nye, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Dylan Thomas.

Visual Writing Prompts. Each chapter of readings now begins and ends with a visual and a writing activity. These provocative images get students thinking and writing about the pattern covered in the chapter and act as prompts for writing an essay.

Opportunities for Writing. Readings are accompanied by an exceptional number of writing opportunities, including prompts for journal entries, collaborative writing, essays in the patterns under consideration, essays on themes raised in the readings, essays that draw on two or more reading selections, and new prompts for essays that draw on library, Internet, and primary research.

Casebook for Argumentation-Persuasion. Now focused on the theme The Law and Society, this chapter gives students the opportunity to examine issues from different perspectives and to synthesize information from multiple readings. The readings include three new topics--reparations for slavery, the use of torture with terrorism suspects, and trying juveniles as adults--in addition to readings on free speech from the previous edition.