The most successful reader of its kind, A World of Ideas is ideal for composition instructors who want to introduce their students to some of the world's most important thinkers and their ideas: for example, Niccoló Machiavelli on government, Sigmund Freud on the mind, and Virginia Woolf on feminism. Because students perceive writers such as these as serious and important, they take the writing course more seriously: they learn to read more attentively, think more critically, and write more effectively. But more important, this may be a student's only opportunity to encounter these thinkers. No other composition reader offers a comparable collection of important readings along with the supportive apparatus students need to understand, analyze, and respond to them.
Undergraduate degree: Brown University, class of 1957; Doctorate from Claremont Graduate University, 1968. I taught English literature at Western Connecticut State University, and for 32 years at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. I was visiting professor at Columbia University and Brown University. My specialties are Milton, Shakespeare, James Joyce, and Modern Irish Literature.
Some of my books: Crown Island, a Quarrytown novel; Volcanic Jesus, a collection of short stories; A World of Ideas; The Bedford Introduction to Drama (and Brief Edition); The Humanities Through the Arts; Substance, Style, and Strategy; Writing As Thinking; The Longman Anthology of American Drama; Humanities: The Evolution of Values; Aesthetics and the Arts.
I am married to Joanna J. Jacobus, dance teacher (UConn), choreographer, and licensed massage therapist. We have two children, Sharon and James.
