The first and bestselling reader of its kind, A World of Ideas engages students with the big ideas that have shaped society and are reshaping it today. Readings by essential authors – from Aristotle and Mary Wollstonecraft to bell hooks and Marilynne Robinson – help students trace the origins of central cultural concepts and respond to them. A World of Ideas asks such crucial questions as, What defines good government? What forces shape our society? What does it mean to be educated?

A World of Ideas helps students respond to these questions by providing the guidance they need to understand, analyze, and write. Substantial, supportive apparatus helps students focus on both the content of the readings as well as the rhetorical moves that writers use to achieve their purposes, providing instruction and models as students join in the important conversations continuing today. New chapters on Education and Gender, and new readings throughout, speak to today’s urgent concerns. Improved writing instruction includes more scaffolding and examples that provide greater support for students.

Preface for Instructors
Note to Students
 
EVALUATING IDEAS: An Introduction to Critical Reading
WRITING ABOUT IDEAS: An Introduction to Rhetoric
 
PART ONE: GOVERNMENT 
Some Considerations about the Nature of Government
Lao-Tzu, Thoughts from the Tao Te Ching
Niccolò Machiavelli, The Qualities of the Prince
Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence
*José Ortega y Gasset, The Greatest Danger, the State
*Francis Fukuyama, Why Did Democracy Spread?
*Cornel West, The Deep Democratic Tradition in America
Benazir Bhutto, Islam and Democracy
Reflections on the Nature of Government

PART TWO: CULTURE 
Some Considerations about the Nature of Culture
Frederick Douglass, from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
Sigmund Freud, The Oedipus Complex
Carl Jung, The Personal and the Collective Unconscious
Virginia Woolf, Shakespeare’s Sister
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail
*Frantz Fanon, On Violence
*Barbara Ehrenreich, Is the Middle Class Doomed?
Reflections on the Nature of Culture
 
PART THREE:   WEALTH
Some Considerations about the Nature of Wealth
*Adam Smith, The Value of Labor
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
Andrew Carnegie, The Gospel of Wealth
F.A. Hayek, Economic Control and Totalitarianism
Robert Reich, Why the Rich Get Rich and the Poor Get Poorer
*Robin Kimmerer, The Gift of the Strawberry
*Dambisa Moyo, Economic Growth Matters to Ordinary People
Reflections on the Nature of Wealth
 
PART FOUR:   EDUCATION 
Some Considerations about the Nature of Education
*Michel Eyquem De Montaigne, Of the Education of Children *Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method
*Diane Ravitch, The Essentials of a Good Education
*Marilynne Robinson, What Are We Doing Here?
*Howard Gardner, A Rounded Version: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences
*Martha Nussbaum, Education for Democracy
*Bell Hooks, Educating Women
Reflections on the Nature of Education
 
PART FIVE:   ETHICS 
Some Considerations about the Nature of Ethics
 Aristotle, The Aim of Man
Hsun Tzu, Man’s Nature is Evil
*W. E. B. Du Bois, The Soul of White Folks
*Mary Midgely, Trying Out One’s Sword
*Philippa Foot, Virtues and Vices
Michael Gazzaniga, Toward a Universal Ethics
*Kwame Anthony Appiah, If You’re Happy and You Know It
 Reflections on the Nature of Ethics
 
PART SIX:   GENDER 
Some Considerations about the Nature of Gender
Mary Wollstonecraft, Pernicious Effects Which Arise from the Unnatural Distinctions Established in Society
Karen Horney, The Distrust Between the Sexes
*Simone De Beauvoir, If Man and Woman Were Equal
*Judith Lorber, Paradoxes of Gender
*Molly Haskell, Who Has It Better, Men or Women?
*Catherine A. MacKinnon, Sexual Harassment: Its First Decade in Court
Judith Butler, From Undoing Gender
Reflections on the Nature of Gender
 
PART SEVEN: SCIENCE
Some Considerations about the Nature of Science
Plato, The Allegory of the Cave
Francis Bacon, The Four Idols
 Charles Darwin, Natural Selection
*Rachel Carson, The Obligation to Endure
Michio Kaku, The Theory of the Universe?
*Ruth Moore, Evolution Revised
*James Gleick, What Is Time?
Reflections on the Nature of Science
 
Acknowledgements
Index of Rhetorical Terms