"Approaching Great Ideas: Critical Readings for College Writers shows students how to approach, understand, and engage with the "big ideas" that have shaped the world. Important essays from classic authors such as Aristotle, Plato, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Charles Darwin, Andrew Carnegie, and Friedrich Nietzsche are presented alongside shorter, contemporary readings on the same themes from authors such as Cornel West, Elizabeth Warren, bell hooks, Fareed Zakaria, Jennifer Ackerman, and Kwame Anthony Appiah, showing students how the ideas of the world's greatest minds are still alive and relevant today. The text also includes two chapters on critical reading and writing and ample support for analyzing the readings, giving students the tools they need to dig into the world's greatest ideas." -- from back cover.