Mind Readings: An Anthology for Writers

How do your senses and memory work? What is the nature of consciousness? What sets your intelligence apart from that of animals and computers? Mind Readings urges your students to think carefully about such questions -- questions about cognition, or the process of thinking itself. Because many of the topics in the book deal directly with the skills students need in college -- such as interpreting and remembering what they read and communicating the ideas they find -- students are likely to improve these crucial skills. The readings themselves are memorable and worth talking about. Deborah Blum tries to convince your students that emotional sensitivity gives enormous advantages to women. Students weigh Francine Patterson and Wendy Gordon's claim that Koko, the gorilla who has mastered human language, deserves to be considered a person. A rich editorial apparatus helps students read texts closely, connect the ideas they encounter in the text to their life experiences, and extend the book's ideas to larger issues such as race, cultural memory, and the social conception of selfhood.