This reader and rhetoric takes a new approach to teaching writing across the curriculum in that it provides descriptions and published examples of genres used in seventeen academic disciplines, as well as opinion essays that typical freshman textbooks contain.

The opinion pieces from newspapers and magazines have been chosen to stimulate student interest and discussion, leading students to do further research in those areas. The examples of actual scholarly writing, while also intended to spark interest and further research, have been chosen to demonstrate the different genres used by writers in the various disciplines. The opinion pieces and the scholarly articles are related to each other by the themes that run through this book, for example, romantic love, clothing styles, body images, and feuds. Accompanying these selections are questions for class discussion, prompts for further research, brief descriptions of the various disciplines and their research methods, descriptions of different documentation styles, and information on integrating material from across the disciplines. The user-friendly rhetoric helps students choose topics for writing, carry out research on their topic, plan their papers, and produce and revise drafts.