V Series

The Fountainhead Press V Series is a collection of single-topic readers that offer a comprehensive look at some of today’s most pressing issues. Designed to give writing students a more nuanced introduction to public discourse, the books feature invention, research, and writing prompts that can be adapted to nearly any kind of college writing class.

Green

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Green selections include lyrics and poetry, memoirs, and other personal writing; an excerpt from a graphic novel and other visual texts; researched arguments, guides, magazine and newspaper pieces, and book chapters. Each of these selections stand on their own as a significant contribution to the public discourse about the environment, and taken together they create a narrative—a complicated story about America’s relationship to, appropriation of, and identification with nature.

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Food

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Food opens with a recipe for “steamed Maryland blue crabs.” This single recipe connects the author to a lifetime of memories, binds her to a locale, and represents a narrative of family ties and traditions. Yet it is merely a gesture toward the singularly important place that food holds in our lives. Far more than providing sustenance, food defines us. It connects us with people and places. It sets us in relation to others. It calls up important questions of sustainability and production, of ethics and responsibility.

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(E)Dentity

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Today, as we live more and more of our lives in online spaces, we carry with us an “(e)dentity,” an electronic identity composed of the digital traces left behind as we participate in virtual worlds. Every time we upload a picture to a social networking site, create an avatar in an online game, blog or tweet about our life, or buy something online, we generate digital traces that, when examined, form our (e)dentity.

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Borders

978-1-59871-472-2 Borders examines the geographical, political, and cultural region of the Southwest, an area also known as the borderland—a region that spans both the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. It focuses on “The Border,” a geographical demarcation separating the US and Mexico, especially along the Rio Grande. But it also explores the “cultural borders” that individuals living in this region experience—conflicts over individual identity, literacy issues, social position, and a sense of belonging within one or both cultures.

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Money

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This book offers perspectives on money in its many  manifestations: the tangible, the abstract, the necessary, the luxuriant, the identity-formative, the ethical. There are pieces that discuss having a lot of money and pieces that describe having very little. The selections represent a variety of voices with a variety of concerns, including explain how money functions, how the middle class has changed over a generation, why college costs so much, and why minimum wage workers can’t always just pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

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Monsters

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It’s under the bed; it’s in the closet. It’s the thing in the basement, but it’s also the thing in the mirror, hot breath on the back of your neck, cold eyes staring at you with loathing and hunger. The selections in this text prompt you to think critically and learn about a phenomenon that stretches across multiple cultures and time periods and to participate in conversations about the issues that surround monsters and the monstrous.

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Death

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With a life expectancy of 78 in the United States, death has now become the domain of the very old or the very unfortunate, so it is no wonder that death has become something of a mystery—despite the fact that we will all eventually die. Given our unease with death, this book includes a collection of works designed to demystify the topic.

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Authenticity

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Matters of authenticity are matters of accuracy, matters of truthfulness, matters of reliability and legitimacy.  While Authenticity begins with Custer and the questions about his legend’s reliability (when tourists and saloon patrons are being rhetorically targeted), it moves through issues of creativity and nonfiction, ghostwriting and grade inflation, padded resumes, and online dating. In the end, Authenticity considers, via Plato, the question as old as western philosophy itself: How do we know that anything we know is, in fact, real?

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(E)Tunes

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Music is everywhere, from our cars to our phones. The experience, cultural relevance, and enjoyment of music and its accompanying manifestations, like album artwork and method of release, create this collection of readings. (E)tunes delves even deeper than that, between song verses, to reveal inner workings of the industry and expose the evolution of musical expression. Editor Rod Taylor explores the correlation between technological innovation, artistic expression, and consumption of music, bringing contemporary readers of the digital age a study in the artifacts of “analog” music.

 

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Health

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Is “health” merely the absence of sickness, or is it a positive quality in its own right? If “health” exists on its own, how would you describe it? Is it the act of caring for ourselves and others, or does “health” mean the process of curing or treating disease? Is happiness a part of being healthy? The essays and excerpts in this text will take you through different ways of understanding your own health, the health of a nation, and the health of those who are dear to you.

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Funny

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Sarcastic inside jokes, viral videos, internet memes: what makes these funny? By looking at the nature of funniness through humor and laughter, Funny shows how analyzing humor can be serious business, turning a critical eye on the subject to get students both thinking and laughing. Funny calls readers to consider humor’s cultural and historical contexts through both contemporary and classic examples. Political humor, humor’s effect on health and well-being, and humor and social perspective name just a few of the diverse selections this timely reader offers.

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Sport

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Western culture has been fascinated by athletes since at least as early as the ancient Greek and Roman times. Indeed, athletes were thought to encompass many ideals of the human form, and the ancient Olympics were an important moment for celebrating athletes’ bodies and their spectacular feats. Sports dictate cultural norms, policy, reform, and research—from advocating research in biotechnologies, performance enhancement, and nutrition and exercise genetics to influencing the direction of public funds to revitalize urban areas through arena construction.

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