Writing Matters offers easy-to-understand, down-to-earth, practical advice about how to write good essays. In the twenty-two short chapters, Peter G. Beidler talks about how to find a topic, the importance of a bold and clear thesis, how to select and organize the evidence that will best support that thesis, what information to put into your introduction, how to write concretely, what "voice" in an essay is, how to write for various audiences, how to doctor a sickly paragraph, and so on. Each chapter is composed as a model essay, so that as students read for information about writing, they also read a series of model essays that show them what a completed essay looks like. One of the most useful parts of the book is the closing section on editing, which contains clear advice, with lots of examples, on how to avoid forty of the most common writing errors. Writing Matters was originally written as a guide for first-year composition students, but it has also been used with success in advanced high school English courses for students preparing for the writing portion of the SAT, and even as a guide for upperclass college students and graduate students for whom English is a second language.

Writing Matters

Reference

Beidler, Peter G.

Words, Language & Grammar

Macmillan Coll Div

"Why do you teach, Pete'" Simple enough question, but an incredibly challenging one to answer. Peter Beidler, in the most thoughtful and honest of ways, delivers his answer in this special book. Read his words and you will have the opportunity to stop and reflect on life, contemplate why you do the thing you do, and rediscover where your life takes on meaning. In the essay, Beidler writes about lifelong learning through teaching, innovative teaching methods, and how teaching is rewarded continuously as former students go on to do good and useful things.Beidler says, "I teach because, being around people who are beginning to breathe, I occasionally find myself, quite magically, catching my breath with them." This book will inspire anyone who reads it. This is a wonderful keepsake to cherish and the perfect gift for any teacher, past or present, who deserves to be thanked and commemorated.

Why I Teach

Education & Teaching

Schools & Teaching

ANDREWS MCMEEL PUB.

In February of 1897 a family of six--four generations, including twin infant sons and their aged great-grandmother--was brutally murdered in rural North Dakota. The weapons used were a shotgun, an axe, a pitchfork, a spade, and a club. Several Dakota Indians from the nearby Standing Rock reservation were arrested, and one was tried, pronounced guilty and sentenced to be hanged. The conviction was reversed by the state supreme court, which ordered a new trial. Only a week later, however, a mob of thirty angry men broke into the county jail in the middle of the night, dragged three of the five accused Indians out, and hanged them from a butcher's windlass. These events were fodder for hundreds of newspaper articles, letters, and legal documents. Many of those documents, including the transcript of the trial convicting one of the Indians and the statement by the state supreme court reversing the conviction, are collected in this work, and, with the author's commentary, tell a disturbing tale of racism and revenge in the pioneer West, one that provided the basic story line for Ojibwe novelist Louise Erdrich's acclaimed novel The Plague of Doves.

Murdering Indians: A Documentary History of the 1897 Killings That Inspired Louise Erdrich's The Plague of Doves

History

Americas

McFarland

Provides an annotated list of short stories about Indians and includes indexes for subjects and tribes

The American Indian in Short Fiction: An Annotated Bibliography

Egge, Marion F.

Scarecrow Press

This volume is a handy research tool for anyone interested in Native American culture or in the changing perceptions of Native American culture as reflected in the 70-odd years of the Saturday Evening Post. Researchers can now access in one volume information that was previously scattered throughout 161 rolls of microfilm. Significantly, the authors do more than simply list references to Native Americans and Eskimos in the magazine; they provide extensive summaries of many of the writings, and in a number of important articles, they have quoted excerpts so that we can read the originals. Also included are reproductions of the images and illustrations from the magazine.Everyone who knew the Saturday Evening Post in its heyday knew it as the most popular and influential American magazine during much of the twentieth century. Full of fiction, nonfiction, art, cartoons, poetry, humor, travel, and more, it found its way into more American households and libraries than any of its competitors. In the era before television, the Saturday Evening Post was a must-read for anyone who wanted to know what was going on around the country or who simply wanted to be entertained.Scholars have always known this magazine to be a storehouse of information about American Indians as reflected in American popular culture, but there was, before now, no easy way to gain access to that storehouse.The ideas and attitudes expressed in the art work―photographs and cartoons, and in the articles―fiction, editorial comment, and letters to the editors, give us an accurate representation of the beliefs of Americans during the first half of this century. As a window to popular perception of American Indians and Eskimos, the 70 years of the magazine are invaluable, and now, for the first time, researchers have a guide to that literature.

Native Americans in the "Saturday Evening Post"

Ghosts, Demons, and Henry James: The Turn of the Screw at the Turn of the Century

Literature & Fiction

United States

Univ of Missouri Pr

This text aims to pilot the reader through the maze of Louise Erdrich's interlocking worlds. Part 1 provides a skeletal outline of each family included in the novels; and Part 2, a dictionary of characters, forms the heart of the book.

A Reader's Guide to the Novels of Louise Erdrich

Barton, Gay

 This revised and expanded edition of Beidler and Barton’s indispensable A Reader’s Guide to the Novels of Louise Erdrich builds on the sellout success of the first edition. Every serious reader of Erdrich’s fiction will want access to this comprehensive new edition, which includes valuable new material.• Completely updated with information on four new novels published since the first edition: The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, The Master Butchers Singing Club, Four Souls, and The Painted Drum• Easy-to-use genealogical charts for the various families• A map and geographical details about the settings for the novels• A detailed composite dictionary of characters (even including the minor characters)• A glossary of all of the Ojibwe words, phrases, and sentences that Erdrich, an astoundingly versatile and energetic Native American author, uses in her panoply of novels

History & Criticism

University of Missouri Press

The raft that carries Huck and Jim down the Mississippi River is often seen as a symbol of adventure and freedom, but the physical specifics of the raft itself are rarely considered. Peter Beidler shows that understanding the material world of Huckleberry Finn, its limitations and possibilities, is vital to truly understanding Mark Twain’s novel. He illustrates how experts on Twain’s works have misinterpreted important aspects of the story due to their unfamiliarity with the various rivercraft that figure in the book. Huck and Jim’s little raft is not made of logs, as it is often depicted in illustrations, but of sawn planks, and it was originally part of a much larger raft. Beidler explains why this matters and describes the other rivercraft that appear in the book. He gives what will almost certainly be the last word on the vexed question of whether the lengthy “raft episode,” removed at the publisher’s suggestion from the novel, should be restored to its original place.

Rafts and Other Rivercraft: in Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain and His Circle)

Humor & Satire

University of Missouri

Peter G. Beidler’s Reader’s Companion is an indispensable guide for teachers, students, and general readers who want fully to appreciate Salinger’s perennial bestseller. Now nearly six decades old, The Catcher in the Rye contains references to people, places, books, movies, and historical events that will puzzle many twenty-first-century readers. Beidler’s guide provides some 250 explanations to help readers make sense of the culture through which Holden Caulfield stumbles as he comes of age. It provides a map showing the various stops in Holden’s Manhattan odyssey. Of particular interest to readers whose native language is not English is the glossary of more than a hundred terms, phrases, and slang expressions. In his introductory essay, “Catching The Catcher in the Rye,” Beidler discusses such topics as the three-day time line for the novel, the way the novel grew out of two earlier-published short stories, the extent to which the novel is autobiographical, what Holden looks like, and the reasons for the enduring appeal of the novel. The many photographs in the Reader’s Companion give fascinating glimpses into the world that Holden has made famous. Beidler also provides discussion of some of the issues that have engaged scholars down through the years: the meaning of Holden’s red hunting hat, whether Holden writes his novel in an insane asylum, Mr. Antolini’s troubling actions, and Holden’s close relationship with his sister and his two brothers. Readers of A Reader’s Companion to J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye will wonder how they managed without it before.

A Reader's Companion to J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye

Coffeetown Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Beidler, Peter G.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Beidler, Peter G.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Beidler, Peter G.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Writing Matters

Why I Teach

Murdering Indians: A Documentary History of the 1897 Killings That Inspired Louise Erdrich's The Plague of Doves

The American Indian in Short Fiction: An Annotated Bibliography

Native Americans in the "Saturday Evening Post"

Ghosts, Demons, and Henry James: The Turn of the Screw at the Turn of the Century

A Reader's Guide to the Novels of Louise Erdrich

A Reader's Guide to the Novels of Louise Erdrich

Rafts and Other Rivercraft: in Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain and His Circle)

A Reader's Companion to J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye