Cover: 50 Essays, 8th Edition by Samuel Cohen

50 Essays

Eighth  Edition©2027  Samuel Cohen

About

A concise reader built for today’s composition course

A diverse collection of engaging essays with built-in support for reading and writing. 

50 Essays is a concise, affordable collection of engaging essays for the composition course. With readings that span a range of topics, time periods, and perspectives, it offers thought-provoking material for the semester and gives the support you need to strengthen your reading and writing skills.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Preface for Instructors 

Alternative Tables of Contents 

By Rhetorical Mode 

By Purpose 

By Theme 

By Clusters and Paired Readings 

By Chronological Order 

Introduction for Students: Active Reading, Critical Thinking, and the Writing Process 

Documentation Guide 

THE READINGS [* represents readings new to this edition]

AI WEIWEI, The Refugee Crisis Isn’t About Refugees. It’s About Us. 

MAYA ANGELOU, Graduation 

GLORIA ANZALDÚA, How to Tame a Wild Tongue 

BARBARA LAZEAR ASCHER, On Compassion 

JAMES BALDWIN, Notes of a Native Son 

*JOHN PAUL BRAMMER, How to Eat a Rattlesnake

SANDRA CISNEROS, Only Daughter

ELI CLARE, Clearcut: Explaining the Distance 

TA-NEHISI COATES, The Paranoid Style of American Policing 

SAMUEL COHEN, Patriot Days 

*THOMAS DAI, Southings

*SAHAR DELIJANI, Feeling in Farsi, Writing in English: On Translating Your Life From One Language to Another

JOAN DIDION, On Keeping a Notebook 

FREDERICK DOUGLASS, Learning to Read and Write 

*EMILY DRABINSKI, From the Word to the World

LARS EIGHNER, On Dumpster Diving 

STEPHANIE ERICSSON, The Ways We Lie 

JEN GANN, Wrongful Birth 

*ROSS GAY, Have I Even Told You Yet About the Courts I’ve Loved?

*DIANAGOETSCH, Mother’s Day

NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES, America Wasn’t a Democracy, Until Black Americans Made It One 

LANGSTON HUGHES, Salvation 

*WILL HUNT, Ghost River

ZORA NEALE HURSTON, How It Feels to Be Colored Me 

THOMAS JEFFERSON, The Declaration of Independence 

*LACY JOHNSON, White Trash Primer

WALTER JOHNSON, Guns in the Family 

*JOSEPH JONES, AI Doesn’t Threaten Humanity. Its Owners Do.

ROBIN WALL KIMMERER, The Council of Pecans 

*JAMAICA KINCAID, On Seeing England for the First Time

STEPHEN KING, Reading to Write 

*ANDREW LELAND, How to Be Blind

AUDRE LORDE, The Fourth of July 

*MICHAEL P. LYNCH, Do We Really Understand Fake News?

NANCY MAIRS, On Being a Cripple 

MATTHEW J. X. MALADY, The Ghosts in Our Machines

*LYDIA MILLET, Endlings

TOMMY ORANGE, Indian Heads

GEORGE ORWELL, Shooting an Elephant 

*ALISSA QUART, Can We Put an End to America’s Most Dangerous Myth?

MIKE ROSE, “I Just Wanna Be Average” 

BRENT STAPLES, Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space 

JONATHAN SWIFT, A Modest Proposal 

AMY TAN, Mother Tongue 

HENRY DAVID THOREAU, Civil Disobedience 

*MIYA TOKUMITSU, In the Name of Love

*SOJOURNER TRUTH, Ain’t I A Woman?

JERALD WALKER, Breathe 

VIRGINIA WOOLF, Professions for Women 

MICHELLE ZAUNER, Crying in H Mart 

Glossary of Writing Terms

Samuel Cohen

Samuel Cohen (PhD, City University of New York) is Associate Professor of English at the University of Missouri. He is the author of After the End of History: American Fiction in the 1990s, co-editor (with James Peacock) of The Clash Takes on the World: Transnational Perspectives on The Only Band that Matters, co-editor (with Lee Konstantinou) of The Legacy of David Foster Wallace, editor of Banning Books in America: Not a How-To, Series Editor of The New American Canon: The Iowa Series in Contemporary Literature and Culture, and has published in such journals as Novel, Clio, Twentieth-Century Literature, The Journal of Basic Writing, and Dialogue: A Journal for Writing Specialists