The Norton Sampler: Short Essays for Composition

By Thomas Cooley

Book Overview

As a rhetorically arranged collection of short essays for composition, our Sampler echoes the cloth samplers once done in colonial America, presenting the basic patterns of writing for students to practice just as schoolchildren once practiced their stitches and ABCs on needlework samplers. This new edition shows students that description, narration, and the other patterns of exposition are not just abstract concepts used in composition classrooms but are in fact the way we think--and write. The Norton Sampler contains 63 carefully chosen readings--classics as well as more recent pieces, essays along with a few real-world texts--all demonstrating how writers use the modes of discourse for many varied purposes.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393978826
• ISBN13: 9780393978827
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.8" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Entertaining

I really enjoyed most of the essays in this book. It was a good samples and groups them according to the type of essay they are. I would love to even have it explain why some of those essays are the type they are as i had a hard time with some of them.

School Book

A collection of essays assembled by type and style of writing.The book instruvts how to write common essay types by presenting the reader with a few examples of each kind. The cool part is the commentary by the authors of some of the essays as to what they were thinking when they wrote them and how they went about the writing process.Good use for an Intro to Writing college level class.

The essay is alive and well written

Norton Readers have long been a staple of university literature and composition courses, which is no doubt the original purpose of this volume (hence the extended title, "Short Essays for Composition"). If you don't let this deter you, you will be rewarded with a collection of some of the best of American essays with a plus. This is not only a collection of well written essays spanning early and modern nonfiction, but you have the bonus of modern prose stylists such as Annie Dillard and Barry Lopez talking about the pieces that are included: how they get ideas, how they craft their work, why they write in nonfiction. A satisfying and interesting collection, well worth reading and passing along to others. Great for teachers and students interested in learning about nonfiction as well, as nonfiction as a genre is the organizing schema of this volume.