Includes index. Wiener, H. S. (2008). Major themes for modern writers. New York: Pearson Longman.

Chapter 1: Introduction: Reading and Writing About Major Themes -- Critical Reading -- Informed Writing -- Chapter 2: All in the Family -- One More to the Lake -- The Burden of a Happy Childhood -- Looking Straight at Gay Parents -- In the Kitchen -- Stone Soup -- The Children of Divorce -- The Deadbeat Dad -- The Parent Trap -- Chapter 3: What is Education -- The Paterson Public Library -- University Days -- Prison Studies -- They Treat Girls Differently, Don't They? -- Indoctrination Isn't Teaching -- Campus Climate Control -- Curtailing High School: A Radical Proposal -- Making the Grade -- Chapter 4: A Life of Work, A Quest for Wealth -- Sweatshops Are Back -- Showing Off -- A Sense of Change -- The Return of the Happy Housewife -- Black Hair -- Where the Brains Are -- Waking Up the Rake -- The Dispossessed -- Chapter 5: Law, Justice and the Democratic Way -- A Hanging -- Death and Justice -- Continuing the Search for Kinder Executions -- Letter from Birmingham Jail -- When They Get Out -- Happy National Apathy Day -- The Tyranny of the Majority -- Does Eating Salmon Lower the Murder Rate? -- Chapter 6: Gender Dynamics -- Why Should Males Exist? -- The Failure of Feminism -- No Name Woman -- Listening to Men, Then and Now -- I Want a Wife -- The Hate Epidemic -- All About Eve -- Marrying Absurd -- Chapter 7: Science, Technology, and Health in a Complex World -- From Pole to Shining Pole -- The Case for Evolution, In Real Life -- What Adolescents Miss When We Let Them Grow Up in Cyberspace -- One Thing They Aren't: Maternal -- When Germs Travel -- Meet Joe Blog -- The Spider and the Wasp -- Humanities and Science -- Chapter 8: Language and Word Power -- The Quare Gene -- An Offering to the Power of Language -- Why Does 'Everybody' Now Put 'Everything' in Quotation Marks? -- Body in Trouble -- A Small Plea to Delete a Ubiquitous Expletive -- Mute in an English-Only World -- Public and Private Language -- Last Words -- I Have a Dream -- The Ways We Lie -- Salvation -- Who Are You Animal Rights Activists Anyway? -- Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of Guns -- If Torture Works ... -- The Last Word on the Last Breath -- Superhero Worship