Patricia P. Matsen, Philip Rollinson, Marion Sousa, eds. Readings from Classical Rhetoric. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990. viii + 382 pages. Roderick P. Hart. Modern Rhetorical Criticism. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman/Little Brown, 1990. iv + 542 pages. Susan Miller. Textual Carnivals: The Politics of Composition. Southern Illinois University Press, 1990. 267 pages. Bruce Lincoln. Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual, and Classification. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. 238 pages. Gregory Clark. Dialogue, Dialectic, and Conversation: A Social Perspective on the Function of Writing. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990. xix + 93 pages. Lawrence J. Prelli. A Rhetoric of Science: Inventing Scientific Discourse. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989. xi + 320 pages. Kathleen E. Welch. The Contemporary Reception of Classical Rhetoric: Appropriations of Ancient Discourse. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1990. 186 pages.

A standard in its field, this new edition provides the most up-to-date current thinking on rhetoric.

Richard Leo Enos, The Literate Mode of Cicero's Legal Rhetoric. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988. xii + 127 pages. George Campbell, The Philosophy of Rhetoric, ed. Lloyd F. Bitzer. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987. Ixxvi + 415 pages. Jasper Neel, Plato, Derrida, and Writing. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988. 252 pages. William A. Covino, The Art of Wondering: A Revisionist Return to the History of Rhetoric. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook; Heinemann, I988. 141 pages. Bruce A: Kimball, Orators and Philosophers: A History of the Idea of Liberal Education. Foreword by Joseph L. Featherstone. Columbia University: Teachers College Press, 1986. 293 pages. Jean‐François Lyotard. The Postmodern Condition: A Report On Knowledge. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Foreword by Frederick Jameson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. 110 pages.

To get a clear view of any scene or activity, one needs a room with a view. It is helpful if the room commands an expansive view-at least on three sides. (The blindside provides a convenient excuse if the viewer fails to note some important feature of the scene.) And if the view is to be truly retrospective and prospective, one cannot be stiff-necked. It takes an ounce of temerity and a pound of arrogance for me to do a survey of the composition scene, because I am not at all confident that I am any more qualified than the next teacher of English to explore the territory. My room with a view has been paid for, as yours has, with a lot of toil and trouble: teaching composition for several years at one or more schools; talking shop with colleagues; listening in on the grapevine; reading the journals and the pertinent books; attending conferences and conventions. But maybe the one experience I have had that most teachers have not had was a six-year tour as the editor of a major composition journal. An editorship sets up a marvelous vantage point from which the view can be as expansive as the one that a forest ranger gets from his mountain-top tower. Even if my eyesight is not 20/20, I can still point out salient features of the landscape to the interested spectator. Despite the myopia of the guide, the survey of the scene, whether retrospective or prospective, can be both fascinating and instructive for the spectator.

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