Reading the World: Ideas That Matter

The only great ideas reader to offer a global perspective.

Western and non-Western, classic and contemporary, longer and shorter, verbal and visual, accessible and challenging. With 72 readings by thinkers from around the world—Plato to Toni Morrison, Lao Tzu to Aung San Suu Kyi—Reading the World is the only great ideas reader for composition students that offers a truly global perspective.

The Second Edition offers more contemporary readings and provides more help to make the texts accessible for undergraduate readers. Brief overviews of each reading give students a sense of what the piece is about, and detailed headnotes call attention to the rhetoric of each reading to help students focus not only on what the authors say but also on how they say it.

The only great ideas reader to offer a global perspective.

Michael Austin (Ph.D., University of California at Santa Barbara) is Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Newman University, in Wichita, Kansas. Before moving to Newman, he was Dean of Graduate Studies at Shepherd University, in West Virginia, where he taught composition, world literature, and British literature. In addition to Reading the World, he is the author of A Voice in the Wilderness: Conversations with Terry Tempest Williams, a collection of interviews.