The New Humanities Readerpresents 32 challenging and important essays from diverse fields that address current global issues. The authors contend that there is a crisis within the humanities today due to specialization within narrow fields of scholarship, resulting in a higher education system that produces students who lack the general cross-disciplinary knowledge needed to better understand today's complex world. The selections encourage students to synthesize and think critically about ideas and research formerly kept apart. This approach challenges readers to resist mimetic thinking and instead creatively connect ideas to help them understand and retain what they read. Through this process of reading, discussing, and writing, students develop the analytical skills necessary to become informed citizens. More than a third of the essays are new to the Second Edition, keeping this reader up-to-date with today's issues. The selections represent both well-known nonfiction authors and newly published writers and are drawn from such periodicals asThe New YorkerandNatural Historyand from best-selling books includingReading Lolita in Tehran, Fast Food Nation,andInto the Wild.Students will be engaged by reading and rereading, analyzing and working with these selections not simply because they are models of good writing, but because they are also deeply thought-provoking pieces that invite readers to respond. New!The 32 essays include 12 new selections by authors including Tim O'Brien, Azar Nafisi, Amy Chua, and Oliver Sacks. New!The new annotated table of contents provides a brief summary of the selection and the important questions raised. New!The new thematic table of contents groups selections by relevant, contemporary themes. The articles and essays are alphabetically organized by author name to allow instructors maximum flexibility in organization.