This text and its accompanying course site (available in Blackboard, WebCT, and CourseCompass) serve as a comprehensive rhetoric, reader, research guide, and handbook. It provides students with an introduction to critical reading and writing, and an overview of a variety of writing tasks—ranging from reflective essays to critical analysis to argument and persuasion assignments. Students will grow as writers and thinkers as they read and discuss controversial issues that affect them both locally and globally.