| Chapter 1: Narration |
| George Orwell: "A Hanging" |
| | Jane Urquhart: "Returning to the Village" |
| Maya Angelou: "Grandmother's Victory" |
| Maxine Hong Kingston: "No Name Woman" |
| Paul Seesequasis: "The Republic of Tricksterism" |
| Anurita Bains: "Riding the Hyphen" |
| Naton Leslie: "Don't Get Comfortable" |
Chapter 2: Description |
| Margaret Laurence: "Where the World Began" |
| Joan Didion: "The Metropolitan Cathedral in San Salvador" |
| Samuel Metcalfe: "Wooding" |
| Virginia Woolf: "The Death of the Moth" |
| Alexander Wolfe: "The Last Grass Dance" |
| Hugh MacLennan: "Portrait of a City" |
| Doris Lessing: "My Father" |
| Mary Taylor Simeti: "Easter in Sicily" |
Chapter 3: Process Analysis |
| Alexander Petrunkevitch: "The Spider and the Wasp" |
| Euell Gibbons: "How to Cook a Carp" |
| Jessica Mitford: "Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain" |
| Joe Fiorito: "Breakfast in Bed" |
| Rita Moir: "Leave Taking" |
| Sue Hubbell: "Honey Harvest" |
| Adam Goodheart: "How to Paint a Fresco" |
Chapter 4: Definition |
| Susan Sontag: "Beauty" |
| Jo Goodwin Parker: "What Is Poverty?" |
| Northrop Frye: "The Double Mirror " |
| Gloria Steinem: "Erotica and Pornography" |
| Charles Taylor: "The Sources of Authenticity" |
| Claudia Glenn Dowling: "Fire in the Sky" |
| John Leo: "Stop Murdering the Language" |
Chapter 5: Division and Classification |
| Susan Allen Toth: "Cinematypes" |
| Ayanna Black: "Inglish: Writing With an Accent" |
| Gail Sheehy: "Predictable Crises of Adulthood" |
| Meg Greenfield: "Why Nothing Is "Wrong" Anymore" |
| Donald Hall: "Four Kinds of Reading" |
| David Foot and Daniel Stoffman: "Boomers and Other Cohorts" |
| Judith Viorst: "The Truth about Lying" |
Chapter 6: Comparison and Contrast |
| M. NourbeSe Philip: "The Absence of Writing or How I Almost Became Spy" |
| Marni Jackson: "Gals and Dolls: The Moral Value of "Bad" Toys" |
| Mark Twain: "Two Views of the Mississippi" |
| Lee Maracle: "Survival Work" |
| Suzanne Britt: "Neat People vs. Sloppy People" |
| Mark Mathabane: "At the Mercy of the Cure" |
| Lydia Minatoya: "Discordant Fruit" |
Chapter 7: Illustration |
| Marshall McLuhan: "How Not to Offend" |
| Robertson Davies: "A Few Kind Words for Superstition" |
| Annie Dillard: "Fecundity" |
| Peter Farb and George Armelagos: "The Patterns of Eating" |
| Edward T. Hall: "The Anthropology of Manners" |
| Jonathan Kozol: "Distancing the Homeless" |
| Alice Bloom: "On a Greek Holiday" |
Chapter 8: Cause and Effect |
| Cecil Foster: "The Black and the Blue" |
| George Woodcock: "The Tyranny of the Clock" |
| Ellen Goodman: "Watching the Grasshopper Get the Goodies" |
| Shelby Steele: "White Guilt" |
| Barbara Dafoe Whitehead: "Where Have All the Parents Gone?" |
| Philip Meyer: "If Hitler Asked You to Electrocute a Stranger, Would You? " |
| David Suzuki: "Repeating History at Our Peril" |
Chapter 9: Analogy |
| Plato: "The Myth of the Cave" |
| Albert Camus: "The Myth of Sisyphus" |
| Margaret Atwood: "Canadians: What Do They Want? " |
| Loren Eiseley: "The Cosmic Prison" |
| Michael Ondaatje: "Tabula Asiae" |
| Alice Walker: "Am I Blue?" |
| Neil Bissoondath: "Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada" |
Chapter 10: Argument and Persuasion |
| Nat Hentoff: "Should This Student Have Been Expelled?" |
| Barbara Ehrenreich: "A Step Back to the Workhouse?" |
| Garrett Hardin: "Lifeboat Ethics: "The Case Against Helping the Poor" |
| Stephen Jay Gould: "Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of Dinosaurs" |
| Andrew Cash: "Rebels with Sponsors" |
| Jonathan Swift: "A Modest Proposal" |
| Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I Have a Dream" |
| Sally Armstrong: "Veiled Threat: "The Women of Afghanistan" |
| Stevie Cameron: "Our Daughters, Ourselves" |
| Ann N. Martin: "Food Pets Die For" |
| Dany Laferrière: "Why Must a Negro Writer Always Be Political?" |
2002 McGraw-Hill Higher Education