Literature: The Human Experience with 2016 MLA Update

Richard Abcarian (PhD, University of California, Berkeley) is a professor of English emeritus at California State University, Northridge, where he taught for thirty-seven years. During his teaching career, he won two Fulbright professorships. In addition to editing Literature: The Human Experience and its compact edition, he is the editor of a critical edition of Richard Wright's A Native Son, as well as several other literature textbooks.

Marvin Klotz (PhD, New York University) was a professor of English emeritus at California State University, Northridge, where he taught for thirty-three years and won Northridge's distinguished teaching award in 1983. He was also the winner of two Fulbright professorships (in Vietnam and Iran) and was a National Endowment for the Arts Summer Fellow twice. In addition to editing Literature: The Human Experience and several other textbooks, he coauthored a guide and index to the characters in Faulkner's fiction.

Samuel Cohen (PhD, City University of New York) is Associate Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Missouri. He is the author of After the End of History: American Fiction in the 1990s (University of Iowa Press, 2009), coeditor (with Lee Konstantinou) of The Legacy of David Foster Wallace (University of Iowa Press, 2012), Series Editor of The New American Canon: The Iowa Series in Contemporary Literature and Culture, and coeditor of JMMLA. He has also been published in such journals as Novel, Clio, Twentieth-Century Literature, The Journal of Basic Writing, and Dialogue: A Journal for Writing Specialists. For Bedford/St. Martin's, he is author of 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology and coauthor of Literature: The Human Experience.

• Provocative new fiction that speaks to students, plus a few classics that continue to engage them. Edwidge Danticat’s "The Book of the Dead" and Junot Díaz’s "Drown" are new to the twelfth edition, as are the classics "Half a Day" by Naguib Mahfouz and Lu Xun’s "Diary of a Madman."
• Recent poetry by poets to watch　— and some old favorites that students shouldn't miss. Selections from Jonathan Swift, William Blake, Czeslaw Milosz, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and others are new to the anthology, as are modern voices such as Dilruba Ahmed, Tishani Doshi, Chris Abani, Omar Pérez, and Richard Blanco.
• A short, teachable play from an acclaimed playwright. Edward Albee’s The Sandbox makes its first appearance in the anthology in the chapter on Life and Death.
• A fresh harvest of nonfiction. The new essays represent some of the most stimulating work in this ever-growing genre, from critically acclaimed essays by Jeremiah Sullivan and Jonathan Lethem to graphic selections from Allie Brosh and Sabrina Jones—as well as short examples of creative nonfiction from the much-admired online journal Brevity.

Four new case studies explore arguments within the genres. Case studies on debates about Flannery O’Connor (fiction), persuading the people we love (poetry), shifting historical perceptions of a classic American play (drama), and the conditions of modern-day revolutions (nonfiction) show students how literature can make arguments about our world and our lives.