Bloom, Lynn. The Arlington Reader: Canons and Context. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2003.

A balanced mix of 132 classic and contemporary essays that instructors will want to teach and students will enjoy reading. Reflecting the needs of today's instructors and the interests of today's students, The Arlington Reader offers 132 essays that are excellent models of good writing in style and technique and illustrate one or more significant rhetorical concerns such as argument, comparison and contrast, and narrative. The essays range in length from three to 15 pages, so are brief enough to be taught in one or two class periods but substantial enough to elicit serious discussion and writing.

Canonical authors, classic and contemporary, including Jonathan Swift, Abraham Lincoln, Charles Darwin, Virginia Woolf, Stephen Jay Gould, Alice Walker, and Annie Dillard, convey a sense of appropriateness and intellectual solidity in a collection of significant writing.

Selected fresh voices including Stephanie Coontz, Eric Lui, and Malcolm Gladwell bring contemporary perspectives to ideas debated in classic essays. The Arlington Reader also includes a large number of women and multicultural authors, among them Gloria Anzaldúa, Lucy Grealy, Gary Soto, Amy Tan, and Patricia A. Williams, who bring alternative perspectives and contemporary voices to the classroom.