Books Acquired Recently: W.W. Norton Edition

I recently received a visit from my local W.W. Norton representative, and just received a number of exam copies that I requested during our meeting.

Appiah, Kwame Anthony. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. 2006. New York: Norton, 2007.

I have wanted to read this book since I saw Appiah speak in 2012. The world seems more and more fractious, thus I am excited to explore his ideas for how cultures can work to come together.

Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange. 1962. Ed. Mark Rawlinson. New York: Norton, 2011.

I have also wanted to read this book for quite some time. Norton’s Critical Editions of older texts have always been excellent, and I am happy to see that in recent years they have begun expanding this series to include more recent texts.

Carr, Nicholas. The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. 2010. New York: Norton, 2011.

The loss of reading skills, intellectual curiosity, and print culture as a result of the rise of the internet is a constant worry of mine. I have tried to teach about this issue in my writing courses several times, but my students find many of the texts on this subject unengaging. Carr’s book looks like it might provide a solution to this problem.

Defoe, Daniel. A Journal of the Plague Year. 1722. Ed. Paula R. Backsheider. New York: Norton, 1992.

I love Defoe’s work, and have been wanting to read this book as a result of my recent explorations of psychogeography because it has been adopted as one of the foundational texts of the field.

Le Guin, Ursula K., and Brian Attebery, eds. The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960-1990. New York: Norton, 1993.

When I told the Norton representative that I am interested in science fiction and sometimes teach it, he mentioned this anthology. I was aware of it, but was surprised to find that it is still in print. I like that it is organized year-by-year based on when the pieces it includes came out rather than by the birth dates of its authors as most Norton anthologies are. The former method allows readers to get a better sense of how the field has developed.

Lunsford, Andrea, et al., eds. Everyone’s An Author, with Readings. New York: Norton, 2013.

I am using another one of Lunsford’s anthologies in my current composition course, but this new one looks like it does a better job of encouraging students to claim their already-extant identities as writers.

Poe, Edgar Allan. The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe. Ed. G.R. Thompson. New York: Norton, 2004.

I love Poe and normally teach him in my American Literature to 1865 course. However, most collections of his work focus only on one genre, whether poetry or short story. This edition includes a number of examples from each genre as well as Poe’s one novel. It is by far the most superior edition of his works that I have seen.