The Civically Engaged Reader

(Click the image to order The Civically Engaged Reader)

Part I: Associating

Selection from Politics
Aristotle

Waiting for the Barbarians
Constantine Cavafy

I Shall Not Beg for My Rights
Henry MacNeal Turner

The Boy Without a Flag
Abraham Rodriguez Jr.

They’ll Say, “She Must Be from Another Country”
Imtiaz Dharker

Fellowship
Franz Kafka

Earliest Impressions
Jane Addams

He Sits Down on the Floor of a School for the Retarded
Alden Nowlan

Selection from The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Adam Smith

Selection from Democracy in America
Alexis de Tocqueville 

Selection from The Souls of Black Folk
W. E. B. Du Bois

Theme for English B
Langston Hughes

Recitatif
Toni Morrison

Mending Wall
Robert Frost

Part II: Serving

Luella Miller
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

Dry Dock
Margaret Sutherland 

Saving the Crippled Boy
Jan Beatty

The Eleventh
Henri Barbusse

The Moral Equivalent of War
William James

The Subjective Necessity of Social Settlements
Jane Addams

The Drum Major Instinct
Martin Luther King Jr.

The Book of Ruth

Selection from Specimen Days
Walt Whitman

The Lovers of the Poor
Gwendolyn Brooks

What We Don’t Talk About When We Don’t Talk About Service
Adam Davis

Part III: Giving

Where Were We
Dave Eggers

Selection from The Reveries of the Solitary Walker
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The Sweetness of Charity
Maya Angelou

The Lamb and the Pinecone
Pablo Neruda

The Gospel of Wealth, Part I
Andrew Carnegie

Selection from “Self-Reliance”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Compassion: The Wish-Fulfilling Jewel
Sogyal Rinpoche

A Bed for the Night
Bertolt Brecht

Four Traditions of Philanthropy
Elizabeth Lynn and D. Susan Wisely

Selection from the Mishneh Torah
Moses Maimonides

If All Who Have Begged Help
Anna Akhmatova

Part IV: Leading

The Wife of His Youth
Charles Waddell Chesnutt

II Samuel, Chapters 11–12
The Destructors
Graham Greene

The Helmsman
Franz Kafka

The Lesson
Toni Cade Bambara

The Use of Force
William Carlos Williams

Selection from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Ursula K. Le Guin

The History Teacher
Billy Collins

Second Inaugural Address
Abraham Lincoln

The Minister’s Black Veil
Nathaniel Hawthorne

Appendixes

Appendix A

A Brief Guide to Reading and Discussion Programs for Service Volunteers

Appendix B

Questions for Discussion