Reading the World: Ideas That Matter

By Michael Austin

Book Overview

From Lao Tsu, Aristotle, and Ibn Khaldun to Charles Darwin, Jomo Kenyatta, and Aung San Suu Kyi, Reading the World: Ideas That Matter is a collection of writing by some of the world's great thinkers. And because ideas have long been expressed visually as well as verbally, the collection also includes drawings, paintings, photographs, and other visual works. Organized around the universal themes of Human Nature; Law and Government; War and Peace; Wealth, Poverty, and Social Class; Science and Nature; Education; and Language and Rhetoric, the texts in this book present a diversity of views on ideas that matter.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393927865
• ISBN13: 9780393927863
• Release Date: November 2006
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Length: 749 Pages
• Weight: 2.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 1.3" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

A great textbook for college students!

I have taught two college-level writing courses with this book, and I continue to be impressed with the scope of its readings. Unlike every other "great-ideas" reader that I have ever seen, READING THE WORLD actually reads, well, the world. It includes many of the traditional Western authors that are common in such collections (Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Martin Luther Francis Bacon, Rousseau, Hobbes, Martin Luther King, etc.), but it adds to the mix a VERY generous assortment of classical non-Western thinkers as well (Sun-Tzu, Mencius, Shotoku, Kenyatta, Gotama, Al-Ghazali, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and many more). I am glad that someone believes--and that some major textbook publishers are beginning to see--that "diversity" in education means a lot more than just the social divisions of American in the 20th and 21st century. There is a very big world out there waiting to be read, and READING THE WORLD is a pretty good place to start.