50 Essays: A Portable Anthology is a compact, inexpensive collection of classic and contemporary essays, most of which have already proven popular in hundreds of classrooms and with thousands of students. Learning how to read good writing effectively is crucial to learning how to write and think critically -- and 50 Essays is full of exceptional prose and many opportunities to practice reading, thinking, and writing about it. 50 Essays represents an extraordinary diversity of voices and genres -- from polemical exhortations to personal narratives, from speeches to meditations, from nuanced arguments to humorous articles. Of varied length and complexity, the essays should stimulate ideas for students' own writing as they provide sound models for rhetorical analysis. But 50 Essays is more than just a selection of good readings. It is a versatile and practical collection designed to prompt critical thinking and writing in the composition classroom. - Preface for instructors.