Includes essays by Stephen Dunn, Margaret Atwood, Cathy N. Davidson, Amy Tan, Eudora Welty, E.B. White, Paule Marshall, Elie Wiesel, Linda Hogan, Peter Elbow, William Least Heat-Moon, Mark Twain, Sylvia Plath, Donald Murray, Roger Angell, Mary Ruffin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Frederick Douglass, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Patricia J. Williams, Isaac Asimov, Thomas S. Kuhn, Jane Brody, Mike Rose, Tom and Ray Magliozzi, Zitkala-Sa, Jonathan Kozol, Stephanie Coontz, Bobbie Ann Mason, Scott Russell Sanders, Joan Didion, Kathleen Norris, Lewis Thomas, Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, Richard Rodriguez, James Thurber, Richard Wright, Alan M. Dershowitz, Susanne K. Langer, Judy Brady, Nancy Mairs, Charles Darwin, Deborah Tannen, Stephen Jay Gould, Vicki Hearne, Bailey White, Raymond Carver, Martin Luther King Jr., Lani Guinier, John Kenneth Galbraith, Robert Reich, Abraham Lincoln, Jonathan Swift, Lynda Barry, Terry Tempest Williams, Gilbert Highet, Tuan Ch'eng-Shih, and Anne Sexton.