The Bedford Reader
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The Bedford Reader is a college composition textbook published by the Bedford-St. Martin's publishing company. It is edited by X. J. Kennedy, Dorothy M. Kennedy, and Jane E. Aaron. It is widely used in freshman composition courses at colleges across the United States.
The book is composed of over seventy essays, a few short stories, and one poem. It is divided into eleven sections by the various methods of development: narration, description, example, comparison and contrast, analysis, process analysis, classification, cause and effect, definition, argument and persuasion, along with a section on mixing the methods.
[edit] Famous works and authors
Numerous essays and stories by noted authors are included in The Bedford Reader. These include:
- An excerpt from Maya Angelou's I Know why the Caged Bird Sings"
- "Shooting Dad", the essay that made Sarah Vowell famous
- An essay by Dave Barry.
- "Remembering my Childhood on the Continent of Africa", from David Sedaris' Me Talk Pretty One Day
- "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker
- Jessica Mitford's "Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain"
- Horace Miner's "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema"
- A story by Russell Baker
- Gore Vidal's "Drugs"
- Gloria Naylor's "The Meanings of a Word"
- William F. Buckley, Jr.'s "Why Don't We Complain?"
- Peter Singer's "A Vegetarian Philosophy"
- Stephen Jay Gould's "A Biological Homage to Mickey Mouse"
- Martin Luther King, Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech
- Edward Said's "Clashing Civilizations?"
- Suzanne Britt's "Neat People vs. Sloppy People"
- Brent Staples's "Black Men and Public Space"
- Chelsey Helmick's "Marmalade ; Friend or Foe?"
The text quickly became a standard in college composition courses across the country. Because of the diversity of works and authors, The Bedford Reader has become popular among Advanced Placement English teachers, specifically those teaching to the AP English Language and Composition test.
