This updated edition aims to provide a framework for thinking about the act of writing in both theoretical and practical ways. A chapter on computers and writing is included, as well as more about the role of reading in learning to write, and about learning to write at all ages.

This book delves into how we come to terms with ourselves, with other people, and with the world in general. It is about how we come to be what we are, and to think the way we do. It is a book about influences on this process. A particular influence to which Smith gives central consideration is language, not just in terms of the communicative networks in which it engages us--the "information" that presents itself to us--but in the largely unsuspected framework for thought that lies within language itself. He also considers deeply the role of technology.

This is a book of...

Reading Without Nonsense remains a groundbreaking, humanistic antidote to the managed "systems" approach to reading instruction. In his extensively revised fourth edition, Frank Smith brings teachers and teacher educators up to date on how reading should not be taught. It is a necessary reminder that reading and learning to read are natural activities.

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899) was a complex figure - a brilliant lawyer and orator who courageously advanced the concept of freethought; a magnetic extrovert whose public esteem, eagerly sought, never earned him the private favors he so generously bestowed on others.
Ingersoll was a staunch republican in the great tradition of Abraham Lincoln, and he vigorously championed such progressive causes as equal rights for blacks, women, and children; liberal divorce laws; and better wages and conditions for workers. Perhaps Ingersoll's greatest legacy derives from his daring rejection of...