For copyright reasons, this anthology is available only in the US and Canada.

A substantial selection of classic essays allows readers to trace the history of the essay from Swift to Woolf and Orwell and beyond. A selection of the finest of contemporary essays—from Witold Rybcynski to David Sedaris and Elizabeth Kolbert—provides a broad sample of the genre in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The academic essays begin with classic selections from such writers as Darwin and Charles Lyell, but the emphasis is on recent decades. Emphasized as well are academic papers or essays that have been especially influential or controversial, from Luis and Walter Alvarez’s suggestion that an asteroid caused the extinction of the dinosaurs to Judith Rich Harris's argument that the influence of peers may be at least as influential in the formation of personality as that of parents.

Works of different lengths, levels of difficulty and subject matter are all represented, as are narrative, descriptive and persuasive essays.

Also included in the text is a range of questions and suggestions for discussion. The text selections are numbered by paragraph for ready reference.

Added to the second edition are new selections by Malcolm Gladwell, Doris Lessing, Eric Schlosser, Binyavanga Wainaina, and over twenty others. This new edition also provides pairings of informal and academic articles that address the same topic, allowing readers to consider contrasting approaches.

Comments:

"The Broadview Anthology of Expository Prose is an excellent resource. Not only does the text contain an array of stimulating literary works and thought-provoking persuasive pieces, but it also includes useful questions that lead to true discussions, rather than simple answers. My students' responses to the readings have sparked meaningful and productive conversations about culture, education, and our ways of viewing the world. To my delight, at the end of a typical meeting we are left with even more questions than when we began. This text fosters students' growth as inquisitive, critical readers and opens the doorway to future academic work." - Alixandra V. Krzemien, Canisius College

"What a wonderful and insightful collection of essays. My writing courses improved by leaps and bounds when I adopted the first edition.… [W]ith a diverse and engaging range of essays, The Broadview Anthology of Expository Prose challenges writers to read beyond the purview of their experience and knowledge so that their writing can consider and cross more horizons. This collection invites students into serious academic discourse via groundbreaking essays by prominent and influential voices from within and without academia; the second edition will prepare writers to understand how any topic or discipline cultivates networks of dialogue across popular, lyrical, scholarly, experimental, and theoretical styles. Don’t be surprised when students read more than the assigned material from The Broadview Anthology, as was the case when I adopted the first edition for my courses; the accessible organization and appeal of this book make it a useful resource for ongoing learning and research." – Beth Staley, West Virginia University

"The editors of The Broadview Anthology of Expository Prose have managed to make significant improvements to what was already an above-average prose anthology. One of the things I appreciated about the first edition was the diversity of authors, topics, perspectives, and styles; the second edition introduces a wider range of contemporary voices through the addition of twenty new essays ... from writers ranging from Barack Obama to Jonah Lehrer to David Sedaris. A particular strength of the new edition is the inclusion of paired articles (two articles on the same topic but directed toward different audiences), which provides students with the opportunity to explore the concepts of audience, voice, and purpose in writing." – Lisa Salem-Wiseman, Humber College

"[A]ccessible to first and second-year university students, [the essays in this volume are] relevant as prompts for writing and discussion, and lend themselves to rhetorical analysis. Welcome additions to the second edition include selections from a broader range of academic disciplines (including works on engineering and neuroscience topics) and paired essays providing divergent perspectives on the same topic. While updating content to reflect current issues (Barack Obama's 2008 speech on race relations "A More Perfect Union" has now made its way into the anthology, along with Binyavanga Wainaina's wonderfully satirical "How to Write about Africa"), Broadview has retained excerpts from classic texts such as Milgram's Behavioral Study of Obedience and Darwin's On The Origin of Species." – Suzanne James, University of British Columbia

"I'm happy to see that the new edition of The Broadview Anthology of Expository Prose has included a selection of newer articles that, on top of the articles maintained from the older edition, will work well in a course on critical reading and writing. Articles such as Binyavanga Wainaina's "How to Write about Africa" and Malcolm Gladwell's "None of the Above: What I.Q. Doesn’t Tell You About Race" provide material that is both current and controversial, making it perfect for class discussions focused on the critical expression of relevant issues. The [editors offer] insightful questions at the end of each article and have chosen readings carefully—[this is an anthology] ... that can be used beneficially in class discussion and as the basis for written assignments." – Louise Nichols, Université de Moncton

"Broadview has surpassed itself. This eclectic anthology represents the essay as a supple form of expression, and its subject as all that pertains to the human condition. Invaluable for the classroom, this collection will also challenge, amuse, provoke, and console the general reader." – Susanna Egan, University of British Columbia

"The Broadview Anthology of Expository Prose is one of the best essay anthologies I have seen. The remarkable diversity of the essays covers an impressive range of authors, styles, topics, and viewpoints. Included are essays from the humanities, the sciences, and the social sciences; scholarly essays, literary essays, and popular essays; traditional essays and contemporary ones; short essays and long ones; essays in a wide range of tones and of voices, by men and women from a wide range of backgrounds. An added bonus is the historical range of prose styles from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries. The quality of the essays also deserves high praise; again and again these readings demonstrate how the most common questions may provoke uncommon insights. Many selections have a sharp edge but they challenge a reader's mindset without being confrontational. The topics make one take notice; the essays then lead the reader through the complexities of analysis. This anthology of significant, incisive, diverse essays should make a significant contribution to the recognition of the essay as a vitally important genre—and of essay writing as a vitally important literary and argumentative art." – Paul D. Farkas, Metropolitan State College

Supplementary Materials: [Back to Top]
Academics please note: This anthology has an instructor's website featuring additional discussion questions and background information. An access code is included with all examination copies.

Please also note that additional essays previously included in the first edition are available on a companion website for students. The access code to this site is included with all new copies.

If you purchased a used copy or you are missing your passcode for this site, please click here to purchase a code online for $5.00.

Table of Contents: [Back to Top]

Titles new to this edition are indicated with an asterisk.

Preface

Table of Contents by Subject

Table of Contents by Rhetorical Category

Michel de Montaigne 

     Of Democritus and Heraclitus        

    from Of Experience

    Of Experience - website

    Of the Education of Children - website

Francis Bacon

    Of Studies           

John Donne

    from For Whom this Bell Tolls (Meditation XVII)   

Margaret Cavendish

    On Social Class & Happiness     

    On Hearing the Ship Was Drowned - website 

Jonathan Swift

    A Modest Proposal

Samuel Johnson

    To Reign Once More in Our Native Country

    On Becoming Acquainted with Our Real Characters - website

Mary Wollstonecraft

    To M. Tallyrand-Périgord, Late Bishop of Autun

Charles Lyell                   

     from The Principles of Geology

Harriet Martineau

    Niagara - website

Henry David Thoreau

    Civil Disobedience

George Copway

    Ball-Playing - website

Charles Darwin

    from On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection

George Eliot

    from Only Temper - website

Mark Twain

    A River Pilot Looks at the Mississippi

*Eliza M.

    Account of Cape Town, 1863

*Lady Agnes MacDonald

    By Car and Cowcatcher

Oscar Wilde

    The New Aesthetic

Jane Addams

    On Halsted Street

W.E.B. DuBois

    A Mild Suggestion

Stephen Leacock

    Roughing It in the Bush - website

* Winston Churchill

    from Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat

    from We Shall Fight on the Beaches

    from This Was their Finest Hour

Virginia Woolf

    Professions for Women            

    The Death of the Moth            

George Orwell

    *Shooting an Elephant

    Politics and the English Language

Stanley Milgram

    from Behavioral Study of Obedience   

Raymond Williams

    Correctness and the English Language

Martin Luther King, Jr.

    Letter from Birmingham Jail   

Groucho Marx

    Dinner with My Celebrated Pen Pal T.S. Eliot

Margaret Laurence

    Where the World Began

Roland Barthes

    The World of Wrestling

Alden Nowlan

    Ladies and Gentlemen, Stompin' Tom Connors! - website

Janet Flanner   

    Pablo Picasso

    Mme. Marie Curie (1866-1934)

Marvin Harris

    Pig Lovers and Pig Haters

Fran Lebowitz

    Children: Pro or Con?

Peter Singer

    Speciesism and the Equality of Animals

Adrienne Rich

    Taking Women Students Seriously

    Invisibility in Academe

Susan Wolf

    Moral Saints - website

Mike Royko

    Another Accolade for Charter Arms Corp

*Luis W. Alvarez, Walter Alvarez, Frank Asaro, and Helen V. Michel

    Extraterrestrial Cause for the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction

*Elizabeth Kolbert

    The Sixth Extinction?

Alice Munro

    What Is Real?   

Robert Darnton

    Workers Revolt: The Great Cat Massacre of the Rue Saint-Séverin   

Elaine Showalter

    Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism

Stephen Jay Gould

    Entropic Homogeneity Isn't Why No One Hits .400 Any More

Ngugi Wa Thiongo

    from Decolonising the Mind

W.H. Graham

    Four Farms in the Tenth of Reach - website

Stevie Cameron

    Our Daughters, Ourselves - website

Anatole Broyard

    Intoxicated by My Illness

Emily Martin

    The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles

*Jamaica Kincaid

    On Seeing England for the First Time

Dionne Brand

    On Poetry   

Ursula Franklin

    Silence and the Notion of the Commons

Robert D. Putnam

    Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital

Alice Beck Kehoe

    Transcribing Insima, A Blackfoot Old Lady

Thomas Hurka

    Philosophy, Morality, and The English Patient

    The Moral Superiority of Casablanca over The English Patient - website

Judith Rich Harris

    Where is the Childs Environment? A Group Socialization Theory of Development

Philip Gourevitch

    from We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families

Gwynne Dyer

    How People Power Topples the Tyrant - website

Larissa Lai

    Political Animals and the Body of History

Witold Rybcyznski

    One Good Turn: Why the Robertson Screwdriver Is the Biggest Little Invention of the Twentieth Century

Tim Devlin

    Does Working for Welfare Work?

Naomi Klein

    The Swoosh

Margaret Atwood

    First Job

*Mark Beeman, John Kounios, et al.

    Neural Activity When People Solve Verbal Problems with Insight

*Jonah Lehrer

    The Eureka Hunt

*Binyavanga Wainaina

    How to Write about Africa

*Doris Lessing

    On Not Winning the Nobel Prize

*Malcolm Gladwell

    None of the Above: What I.Q Doesnt Tell You About Race

    Priced to Sell: Is Free the Future?

    The Sports Taboo - website

*Adam Gopnik

    The Corrections

*Eric Schlosser

    Penny Foolish: Why Does Burger King Insist on Shortchanging Tomato Pickers?

*Margaret Wente

    The Charitable and the Cheap: Which One Are You?

*Fabrizio Benedetti, Antonella Pollo, and Luana Colloca

    Opioid-Mediated Placebo Responses Boost Pain Endurance and Physical Performance: Is It Doping in Sport Competitions?

*David Sedaris

    This Old House

*Daniel Heath Justice

    Fear of a Changeling Moon

*Barack Obama

    A More Perfect Union

*Irene M. Pepperberg, Jennifer Vicinay, and Patrick Cavanagh

    Processing of the Muller-Lyer Illusion by a Grey Parrot

*Irene Pepperberg

    from Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Uncovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligenceand Formed a Deep Bond in the Process

*William F. Baker, D. Stanton Korista, and Lawrence C. Novak

    Engineering the World's Tallest - Burj Dubai

*Peggy Orenstein

    Stop Your Search Engines

*Neal McLeod

    Cree Poetic Discourse

*Michael Harris

    The Unrepentant Whore

*James Salter

    The Art of the Ditch

Biographical Notes

Acknowledgments

Index