Freshman composition instructors will not find a more affordable basic textbook for their cash-strapped students. This book focuses on total literacy, with emphasis given to reading comprehension of increasingly challenging texts. Includes short stories by Poe, de Maupassant, London, Mansfield, Chekhov, Bierce, Chopin, Joyce, Gibran, Cather, and Vonnegut, poetry by Dickinson, Housman, Sassoon, Owen, Yeats, St. Vincent Millay, Frost, Barrett Browning, Byron, Poe, Whitman, and Shakespeare, and instruction on writing personal narratives, brainstorming activities, what is not appropriate in undergraduate papers, suggestions for effective peer editing, logical fallacies, samples of MLA citations, a works cited exercise, a sample MLA-style paper, as well as rubrics and checklists for various types of writing.