Includes index.

Studying the System 1 -- Bessie Head The Deep River: A Story of Ancient Tribal Migration 4 -- Claude Lévi-Strauss Men, Women, and Chiefs 10 -- Thucydides Pericles Reminds the Athenians Who They Are 14 -- Virgil Dux Femina Facti: Dido Builds Carthage 18 -- Rosanna Warren Poetry Reading 25 -- Friedrich Engels On Authority 27 -- Herman Melville The Monkey-Rope 30 -- Jane Jacobs Understanding the City 32 -- George Orwell Shooting an Elephant 38 -- Martin Luther King Jr. Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution 44 -- Emulating Heroes 57 -- Giovanni Boccaccio Nathan and Mithridanes 59 -- Miguel de Cervantes Tilting at Windmills 65 -- Joseph Roth The Hero of Solferino 68 -- Carolyn G. Heilbrun Once upon a Time 82 -- Jorge Luis Borges The Dead Man 93 -- Janet Planner Isadora (1878-1927) 98 -- Album: Artists of Deep Attention 106 -- Seneca On Noise 108 -- Augustine Ambrose Reading 111 -- Horace Porter Ulysses S. Grant at Work 112 -- Zen Flesh, Zen Bones A Cup of Tea 116 -- Wallace Stevens The Snow Man 117 -- Georges Simenon The Method of Inspector Maigret 118 -- Risking Revision 124 -- Niccolò Machiavelli Whoever Desires Constant Success Must Change His Conduct with the Times 127 -- Lao She An Old and Established Name 129 -- Mikhail Zoschenko Electrification 137 -- Atul Gawande Personal Best 139 -- Alexander Wolff Birth of a Dynasty 156 -- Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin Robert Oppenheimer at Los Alamos 165 -- Ovid Daedalus and Icarus, Daedalus and Perdix 178 -- Jean de la Fontaine The Oak and the Reed 182 -- Knowing the Way 185 -- Lao Tzu from Tao Te Ching 187 -- Marcus Aurelius from Meditations 190 -- Sun Tzu The Ruler and the General 192 -- Christine de Pizan About the Good Sense and Cleverness of Queen Dido 194 -- Francis Bacon of Studies 198 -- Mark Singer Gone Fishing 200 -- Marnie Hanel A Woman's Place Is Running the Kitchen 215 -- Carl Von Clausewitz On Military Genius 221 -- Leo Tolstoy Time and Patience 235 -- A. J. Liebling Omar Bradley 242 -- Zen Flesh, Zen Bones The Taste of Banzo's Sword 247 -- Robert Frost The Oven Bird 248 -- Album: Artists of Delay 250 -- John Milton When I Consider How My Light Is Spent 252 -- Plutarch Fabius Maximus, Two Sayings of Augustus Caesar 253 -- Elizabeth I Replies to Parliamentary Petitions 261 -- Penelope, Two Views 264 -- Discussion Questions 267 -- Cultivating Trust 268 -- Jataka Tales The Monkey's Heroic Self Sacrifice 271 -- Arabian Nights The Tale of King Yunan and the Sage Duban 274 -- Marcus Aurelius from Meditations 279 -- Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vac A How to Build a Ship 281 -- George Stevens Jr. Interview with Jean Renoir 284 -- Martin E. Dempsey Mission Command 297 -- Malcolm Gladwell Open Secrets 305 -- Album: Con Artists 321 -- Aesop's Cables The Crane and the Crow 323 -- Zen Flesh, Zen Bones In the Hands of Destiny 324 -- Plutarch Patching Out the lion's Skin 325 -- Niccolò Machiavelli The Way Princes Should Keep Their Word 326 -- Romance of the Three Kingdoms The Justice of General Ts'ao 329 -- Mervyn LeRoy Cecil B. DeMille on the Set 332 -- C. K. Williams Hercules, Deianira, Nessus 337 -- Negotiating World and Self 340 -- Michel de Montaigne of Cannibals 342 -- Baldassare Castiglione Speaking the Truth 353 -- Abolqasem Ferdowsi Sekandar Visits the Emperor of China 358 -- Red Cloud Speech at St- Nicholas Hotel, Speech at Cooper Union 361 -- Zadie Smith Speaking in Tongues 364 -- Francis Bacon Of Negociating 378 -- Elizabeth I Latin Rebuke to the Polish Ambassador 379 -- Chuang Tzu Suppose You and I Have an Argument 380 -- Taking Responsibility 383 -- Homer Hector Returns to Troy 385 -- Marcus Aurelius/ram Meditations 390 -- Mencius The Governor of P'ing Lu, Tyrant Chieh 391 -- Gospel according to St. Matthew Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents 393 -- William Shakespeare A Little Touch of Harry in the Night, The Deliberation of Brutus 395 -- Herman Melville A Valor-Ruined Man 413 -- Dashiell Hammett If They Hang You 418 -- Rachel Carson Silent Spring 424 -- Album: Artists of Persuasion 432 -- Virginia Woolf Professions for Women 434 -- Franklin d. Roosevelt First Fireside Chat on Banking, The Four Freedoms 439 -- Winston Churchill The Defence of Freedom and Peace 445 -- Shakespeare Rallies the Troops 449 -- Learning from Failure 458 -- Anne Fadiman The Arctic Hedonist 460 -- Herodotus The Story of Croesus 471 -- Plutarch Alexander 480 -- Babur the Trek to Kabul 492 -- Ulysses S. grant A Valuable Lesson 498 -- Czeslaw Milosz Orpheus and Eurydice 502 -- Resisting the System 507 -- Book of exodus The Story of Moses 509 -- Barbara w. Tuchman The Peasants' Revolt 517 -- Mary Wollstonecraft The Tyranny of the System 522 -- Frederick Douglass Taking the Ell 527 -- Eugene V. Debs Statement to the Court 539 -- Mohandas Gandhi Nonviolence Is the First Article of My Faith 543 -- Nelson Mandela I Am Prepared to Die 547 -- Songs of Resistance 550 -- Been in the Storm So Long 552 -- Sinking of the Titanic 553 -- De Ballit of de Boll Weevil 554 -- John Henry 557 -- Cryderville Jail 561 -- Woody Guthrie Do Re Mi 563 -- W. C. handy St. Louis Blues 564 -- Marilyn Chin Blues on Yellow 565 -- Poetry of Exile 566 -- Osip Mandelstam Poem No. 286 (On Stalin) 567 -- Heberto Padilla A Prayer for the End of the Century 567 -- Discussion Questions 568 -- ALBUM: Abraham Lincoln, Artist of Judgment 569 -- Letter to David hunter 571 -- Letters to George b. McClellan 573 -- Letter to Joseph hooker 576 -- Letter to John M. Schofield 578 -- Letters to Ulysses S. Grant 579 -- Correspondence with the war Department 582 -- Second inaugural address (March 4, 1865) 584 -- Disciplining Desire 586 -- William Shakfspeare Macbeth 589 -- ALBUM: Art of the Story 677 -- Coda: Letting Go 699 -- Wang Wei In Reply to Vice-Magistrate Chang 700 -- Gjertrud Schnackenberg Darwin In 1881 702 -- Lucie Brock-Broido Inevitably, She Declined 706.