50 Essays: A Portable Anthology

by Samuel Cohen

50 A Portable Anthology directly addresses students' and instructors' concerns that composition readers are too expensive and too large. At less than half the size and price of comparable readers, 50 Essays meets the needs of a wide variety of classrooms. The carefully chosen table of contents presents enough familiarity to reassure instructors, enough novelty to keep things interesting, and enough variety to accommodate many different teaching needs. The editorial apparatus has been designed to support that variety of needs without being intrusive. In its second edition, 50 Essays continues to offer selections that instructors love to teach, with even more flexibility and more support for academic writing.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, School, Read For School, Anthologies, Short Stories, Teaching

528 pages, Paperback

First published December 3, 2003

About the author

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Reviews

[Michelle]

I ended up reading this entire book even though I only need to read like six of the essays. There are a few really well know bits included (i.e. The Declaration of Independence) and but there are a lot that are taken from full works or practically unknown essays. A lot of them are really good, and there are a good chunk that are really boring and feel like a bunch of rambling. It's actually more enjoyable if you have someone to make you think about them, like a professor does.

[Brandon]

This is a review of the 3rd edition.

50 Essays: a Portable Anthology is about as exciting as it sounds. Some of the essays are quite good and interesting. And then there are the long, boring ones that almost put you to sleep. A nice thing about this collection is that most of the essays are relatively unknown, with obvious exceptions like "The Declaration of Independence".

Essays I Like:
The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me, Sherman Alexie
Why Don't We Complain?, William F. Buckley Jr.
Shooting an Elephant, George Orwell
Kid Kustomers, Eric Schlosser
The Men We Carry in Our Minds, Scott Russell Sanders
Shooting Dad, Sarah Vowell

Essays I didn't like:
, Rachel Carson
The one by Richard Rodriguez
Notes of a Native Son, James Baldwin
And I would lose interest on any essay that was over 12 pages

[christina]

A solid collection, like all the other editions. The sixth edition carries over some of the more timeless and stylistically obvious essays from previous editions with a handful of new narrative essays to keep the collection fresh.

My only complaint is, most of the new essays are narrative essays and yes, some of these essays can also be considered descriptive or example essays but focusing on essays that positions itself as a personal essay is very limiting in scope for what I'm trying to teach my students, forcing me to use more outdated essays or a repeat of last terms' essay selection -- which is boring for both the students and myself.

I wonder if this is due to the fact that analysis, argumentation, critical thinking are less important now than personal experience and so the reason for the lack of more critically thoughtful essays that ruminate and analysis is due to the hard shift to individualism and the individual experience. If so... :(

[Kate Laws]

Excellent anthology of important and influential essays.

[Alma]

An accomplishment!!
So many amazing essays in here that I’m so glad I had the chance to read. Some I did not like as much but as Stephen King says in Reading To Write the best way to learn to write is to read, to read pieces you don’t believe are excellent.
In King’s essays, the books he learns from are certifiably not good. None of the collected essays I thought were bad per se, but I’m trying to make the reference work.

[R.K. Cowles]

3 3/4 stars

[julia]

ok I haven’t read every essay in this book but I’ve read a lot of them and it’s such a good collection!! my faves are mother tongue by amy tan and on being a cripple by nancy mairs

[Lydia]

Content Summary:

Romance: There are some essays that discuss relationships, romance, sexual content, and sexual identity.
Violence & Gore: Perhaps, some explore various accidents or ways in which they have been treated poorly. Nothing overly graphic.
Profanity: There are some essays that include swearing.
Substance Use: Some essays include descriptions of people drinking or smoking.
Frightening/Triggering Scenes: There are many essays that discuss people’s personal feelings/actions. They are not all sunshine and rainbows, I would be careful to pick adn choose which you prefer.

Good collection of essays. I skipped a couple as I had already read them before, or I had no interest in the subject. Definitely a lot of good ones in this collection though!

[Nate]

Essays I liked:
How To Tame A Wild Tongue
Why Don't We Complain?
Myth of a Latin Woman
The Ways We Lie
Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain-so dryly funny and interesting
Two Ways to Belong in America
Being Black and Middle Class
A Modest Proposal
Aren't I a Woman?
Mother Tongue
The inclusion of historical essays like Machiavelli excerpt and Declaration of Independence

Didn't like:
The essay by Richard Rodriguez, melodramatic
by Dave Barry, seemed overcautious
Stunt Pilot was dull

[Nikki Wood]

I loved this book. My son read it because he had to in high school, but I read it as an adult because I want to continue learning. And it worked. There were so many authors in this book that I have heard about, but I doubt I would have grabbed the opportunity to become familiar with their work. Frederick Douglass comes to mind. I think it's so important for us to continue learning as we age, seeking out new experiences and expanding our view of the world. This was definitely a must read, especially if a person is unlikely to read every author's work individually.

[Lauren]

I enjoy teaching from this book because of the variety of material and its compactness. Most of the essays have a thematic mate within the text, so it's been easy when designing units that ask the students to compare styles, arguments, or the larger social implications of the material.

In all, it's been a wonderful tool for teaching the finer points of expository analysis and composition to my students.

[Darby Glenn]

I definitely enjoyed the variety of issues touched upon in the essays therein; there are a great many perspectives provided in regards to these issues, many of which I hadn't thought of or considered before. It was this anthology that convinced me to give nonfiction and essays a chance for reading, and I haven't regretted it since.

[Anne]

This is a textbook for an AP English class. I thought it would be deadly dull, but it wasn't! Some of them are amazing and most of them are really readable. I'm not sure I would have loved it when I was a senior in high school but I like to think I would have. Overall, it's very thought-provoking and I learned things.

[Ider Bayar]

Very diverse selection of topics and writers. I especially enjoyed how many of the writers are each unique figures themselves, such as cripples, foreign citizens, suffragettes and minorities. This would be an excellent book for an English writing class.

[Stella Maybury]

Excellent variety of essays. Science, history, personal memoirs, politics, and simply excellent literature are all here. Inevitable, predictable emphasis on race and gender, but high quality authors and works throughout.

[Alex Wiseman]

Great school lesson collection of essays that kept me thinking. Good representation across race, class, and gender makes this an insightful and enlightening collection. Wish the essays were organized in a more meaningful way, but this was a good primer to get me started on other authors and essays.

[Sandra Orozco]

Has some heavy topics. Pretty cool

[رُقيّـة]

Excellent choice of essays.
My favorite one is “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” by Alexie Sherman.

[Donna Brown]

Another one that I read with my AP Juniors, but I did read every essay in the anthology so . . .

[Teresa Esperanza]

Oof AP English Language spoke to my soul.

[Calleen Petersen]

I really enjoyed many of the essays in this book. It expanded my think about several issues and cultures.

[♡ Angie ♡]

Excellent!

[Jeannie]

Excellent example for tutoring undergrad writing.

[EngIIrockz]

Excellent teaching resource...

[Michelle Yisrael]

I used several of the articles in the anthology in a composition course I teach. It is well written, organized logically, and very informative.

[izzy putnam]

Easy to understand and start conversations about, easy to annotate as well. Good right-before-bed book :)

[David]

It would be foolish to expect any compilation to not have mixed results. I think, had I read this as intended - in a classroom, I would have enjoyed it more.

[Kirsten]

If you need great quotes to reference for AP essays, this book is your BEST. FRIEND.

[Jordan Gehring]

Useful and interesting collection of essays with a wide variety of themes. Used to teach a college composition course.

[Ellie Maney]

I loved ap lang