The Books/Reading Thread

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Reading this as a possible text to use for my Rhetoric class in the Fall.
 
if you're teaching Rhetoric, Jeremy, check out James Berlin. He's a Rhetoric and Composition scholar who tries to make a case for reintroducing classical rhetoric in the modern classroom. There's also The Rhetorical Tradition which is edited by Patricia Bizzell, one of the bigwigs in Rhet/Comp theory
 
if you're teaching Rhetoric, Jeremy, check out James Berlin. He's a Rhetoric and Composition scholar who tries to make a case for reintroducing classical rhetoric in the modern classroom. There's also The Rhetorical Tradition which is edited by Patricia Bizzell, one of the bigwigs in Rhet/Comp theory

Unfortunately neither author is on the list of approved texts from which to choose. I have the option of using just a reader, but also to throw in a "trade book" that focuses on one particular issue. Here's the list:

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Any recommendations? I'm really liking The Shallows so far, since it draws from many, many fields of knowledge (history, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, etc.).

I have till July 16th to make my final decisions.
 
I meant more for your own edification. Your students would be bored to tears by the books I suggested.

They Say/I Say is one of the most popular freshman books to use. A couple colleagues I know who are pretty picky really like it. I've only read a few of the tradebooks, but I think it might be cool to use Persepolis since it's a graphic novel
 
It's quite good. Of course I'm not a historian but I think he does a good job of not only describing Caesar himself, but also of explaining his world (f.e. detailing how Rome was governed and administrated during the last century B.C.). It would've been interesting to have him discuss the aftermath and the transformation into empire, but that's for another book I guess.
 
Damn, I need to learn French.

I own Sartre's Being and Nothingness, but it strikes me as slightly pale in comparison to the other 20th-century ontology behemoths, i.e. Heidegger's Being and Time and Badiou's Being and Event.

Then again, I can honestly claim to have probably understood less than half of Heidegger's work. The famous sections are the ones I tend to focus on and re-read. I'm slowly coming around to Badiou.