The sixth edition of and your point . . . ? is designed to meet course content and standards for first-semester freshman composition and rhetoric students at community colleges as well as four-year colleges and universities.

Using the cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary pieces in this text, students are asked to use their critical reading and thinking skills to examine their understanding of and use of language to explore concepts across the academic curriculum, i.e., the natural sciences, the liberal arts, the social sciences.

The readings in this edition of . . . and your point? were selected to emphasize critical reading and thinking across a number of academic disciplines.

We used a number of criteria in choosing the readings:

• concepts, such as Darwinism, Marxism or emancipation, that will challenge our students to think critically;
  
  
• a level of language that demands close reading, and re-reading, to achieve understanding;
  
  
• content that reflects thinking and writing across a range of academic disciplines, including the natural sciences, sociology, anthropology, music, painting, history, philosophy, religion, literature, economics.
  
  
• connections between/among readings to encourage the students to explore relationships and understand different facets of complex issues, and
  
  
• non-textual materials, such as charts, tables, graphs, cartoons, and fine art, requiring students to be able to interpret them and relate them to text.
  
  
  

PART SIX
USAGE