Now in its sixteenth edition, Effective Group Discussion combines the most recent research findings and practical tools students need to become productive group members. A variety of secondary groups are covered in the text: work groups, committees, task forces, self-directed work teams, and other small groups whose objectives include finding solutions to problems, producing goods, and creating policies.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Progressive reformers set up curricula in journalism, public relations, and creative writing to fulfill their own purposes: well-trained rhetors could convince the United States citizenry to accept Progressive thinking on monopolies and unions and to elect reform candidates. Although Progressive politicians and educators envisioned these courses and majors as forwarding their own goals, they could not control the intentions of the graduates thus trained or the employers who hired them. The period's vast panorama of rhetoric, including Theodore Roosevelt's publicity stunts, muckraker exposes, ad campaigns for patent medicines, and the selling of World War I, revealed the new national power of propaganda and the media, especially when wielded by college-trained experts imbued with the Progressive tradition of serving a cause and ensuring social betterment.
In this unique volume, Adams' chronicles the creation of this advanced curriculum in speaking and writing during the Progressive era and examines the impact of that curriculum on public discourse. Unlike other studies of writing instruction, which have concentrated on freshman curriculum or on a specific genre, this book provides a historical and cultural analysis of the advanced composition curriculum and of its impact on public persuasion. Adams surveys American instruction at state and private schools across the country, with special attention given to the influential Progressive universities of the Midwest. She draws on a wide variety of primary data sources including college catalogs, course assignments, departmental minutes, speeches, and journals, and includes an extensive bibliography of research sources concerning advanced composition instruction and American rhetoric before World War II. As a resource offering remarkable historical insights on the history of writing instruction in America, this volume is of great interest to scholars and students in rhetoric, communication, and technical writing.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Progressive reformers set up curricula in journalism, public relations, and creative writing to fulfill their own purposes: well-trained rhetors could convince the United States citizenry to accept Progressive thinking on monopolies and unions and to elect reform candidates. Although Progressive politicians and educators envisioned these courses and majors as forwarding their own goals, they could not control the intentions of the graduates thus trained or the employers who hired them. The period's vast panorama of rhetoric, including Theodore Roosevelt's publicity stunts, muckraker exposes, ad campaigns for patent medicines, and the selling of World War I, revealed the new national power of propaganda and the media, especially when wielded by college-trained experts imbued with the Progressive tradition of serving a cause and ensuring social betterment.
In this unique volume, Adams' chronicles the creation of this advanced curriculum in speaking and writing during the Progressive era and examines the impact of that curriculum on public discourse. Unlike other studies of writing instruction, which have concentrated on freshman curriculum or on a specific genre, this book provides a historical and cultural analysis of the advanced composition curriculum and of its impact on public persuasion. Adams surveys American instruction at state and private schools across the country, with special attention given to the influential Progressive universities of the Midwest. She draws on a wide variety of primary data sources including college catalogs, course assignments, departmental minutes, speeches, and journals, and includes an extensive bibliography of research sources concerning advanced composition instruction and American rhetoric before World War II. As a resource offering remarkable historical insights on the history of writing instruction in America, this volume is of great interest to scholars and students in rhetoric, communication, and technical writing.

Building beyond Lakoff's election-year best-seller, "Don't Think of an Elephant," this new book shows how the values of American voters are dramatically shifting. With the arrival of the 2008 election year, a rising feminized majority'-made up of both women and men-is emerging as the pivotal force in American politics. Emerging trends show these values are broadly progressive and address not just the needs of women but the general interests of society. They are held by women substantially more than by men but have become the values held by a majority of all voters, including millions of men. Like earlier eras in American history, such as the New Deal, the rise of the feminized majority today presents an opportunity for the Democrats to become the governing party for decades to come. Looking beyond the 2008 election, Adam and Derber describe a new political strategy that targets the feminized base and opens up a window for major social justice movements to make progressive change. Like Lakoff's, this striking new book-perfectly timed for election year 2008-offers a new vocabulary for every citizen who wants to understand (and reimagine) American politics. It will intrigue and provoke readers, stirring new conversation among progressives and new insights for every citizen interested in politics, morality, religion, values, and social justice.See the Youtube video featuring The New Feminized Majority at: http: //www.youtube.comRead the "American Chronicle" review by Jim Melvin at: 'http: //www.americanchronicle.com

Building beyond Lakoff's election-year best-seller, Don't Think of an Elephant, this new book shows how the values of American voters are dramatically shifting. With the arrival of the 2008 election year, a rising "feminized majority"-made up of both women and men-is emerging as the pivotal force in American politics. Emerging trends show these values are broadly progressive and address not just the needs of women but the general interests of society. They are held by women substantially more than by men but have become the values held by a majority of all voters, including millions of men. Like earlier eras in American history, such as the New Deal, the rise of the feminized majority today presents an opportunity for the Democrats to become the governing party for decades to come. Looking beyond the 2008 election, Adam and Derber describe a new political strategy that targets the feminized base and opens up a window for major social justice movements to make progressive change. Like Lakoff's, this striking new book-perfectly timed for election year 2008-offers a new vocabulary for every citizen who wants to understand (and reimagine) American politics. It will intrigue and provoke readers, stirring new conversation among progressives and new insights for every citizen interested in politics, morality, religion, values, and social justice.

Owning Up provides a new model for interpreting the U.S. discourse on privacy. Focusing on the formative period of the nineteenth century, Adams shows that conceptions of privacy became meaningful only when posed in opposition to the encroaching forces of market capitalism and commodification. Even as Americans came to regard privacy as a natural right and to identify it with sacred ideals of democratic freedom, they also learned to think of it as fragile and under threat. Owning Up argues that narratives of violation and dispossession played a fundamental role in the emergence of U.S. privacy discourse and in the influence this discourse continues to exert within U.S. culture.
Using biographical and autobiographical writing by and about women writers including Sojourner Truth, Margaret Fuller, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth Keckley, and Louisa May Alcott, Adams traces the figure of imperiled privacy across five decades. Where previous studies of early American privacy have focused on white femininity and middle-class domesticity as defining features, Owning Up contends that privacy is an empty category. Without a fixed content of its own, privacy acquires meaning only by being articulated-and constantly re-articulated-against threats of invasion and loss. Chapters look at how such narratives operate within particular political and economic contexts, including antebellum reform, racial reconstruction, free labor ideology, and laissez faire social Darwinism. The analysis concludes at the end of the century with calls for legislation to protect the individual's "right to be let alone," a culminating moment in the discourse of threatened privacy that informs the American sense of self to this day.