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When Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum (WRAC) was first published in 1982, it was—viewed from one angle—an experiment. We hoped to prove our hypothesis that both students and teachers would respond favorably to a composition reader organized by the kinds of specific topics that were typically studied in general education courses. The response was both immediate and enthusiastic. Instructors found the topics in that first edition of WRAC both interesting and teachable, and students appreciated the links that such topics suggested to the courses they were taking concurrently in the humanities, the social sciences, and the sciences. Readers also told us how practical they found our "summary, synthesis, and critique" approach to writing college-level papers. In developing each of the seven subsequent editions of WRAC, we have been guided by the same principle: to retain the essential multidisciplinary character of the text while providing ample new material to keep it fresh and timely. Some topics have proven particularly enduring—our "Cinderella" and "Obedience" chapters have been fixtures of WRAC since the first edition. But we take care to make sure that a third to one-half of the book is completely new every time, both by extensively revising existing chapters and by creating new ones. Over eight editions, our discussion of rhetoric has expanded to six chapters. While we have retained an emphasis on summary, critique, and synthesis, we continue to develop content on such issues as argumentation and online research and writing that addresses the issues and interests of today’s classrooms.
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