本教材严格根据高等学校英语专业教学大纲的要求进行编写。

本教材选材广泛、内容新颖：既有反映英美文化和风土人情的轻松读物，也有涉及学校教育、社会生活、语言发展、心理和智商等严肃题材的文章，还有不少课文反映了当今世界人们普遍关心的问题，如环境保护、全球化经济、跨文化交际、企业管理、网络通信等。本书语言地道规范，绝大多数课文选自英美国家近年出版的书刊报纸，呈现给读者的是原汁原味的现代英语，对学生语言基本功的培养大有裨益。

本教材共分二十个单元，每一单元由主题相似的Text A和Text B组成，并配有生词脚注，方便学生阅读；注释包括作者简介及相关文化背景知识。书后附有部分练习的参考答案。

本教材可供高等院校英语专业二年级学生作为基础阶段的阅读教材使用，也可供具有中等英语水平的广大英语爱好者自学时使用。

Unit 1

 Text A My Life/001

 Text B The New Job/005

Unit 2

 Text A My Oedipus Complex ( I )/011

 Text B My Oedipus Complex ( II )/018

Unit 3

 Text A Good Taste in Knowledge/025

 Text B Inquiry Can Take the Content out of Education/030

Unit 4

 Text A The Merits of Meritocracy/034

 Text B The Story of the A-Bomb Kid/039

Unit 5

 Text A Space Speaks/046

 Text B Don't Misread My Signals/051

Unit 6

 Text A Ambushed in the Dentist's Chair as Time Goes By/055

 Text B Tea/059

Unit 7

 Text A The Aims of Education/065

 Text B Liberal Arts for the 21st Century/069

Unit 8

 Text A When You Must Make a Lasting Impression/073

 Text B What I’ve Learned from Men/077

Unit 9

 Text A Japanese and American Workers: Two Casts of Mind/084

 Text B The Japanese Approach to Business/091

Unit 10

 Text A Miss Amelia and Marvin Macy/096

 Text B Rural Love Story/100

Unit 1 1

 Text A For the Birds/104

 Text B Ten Major Threads to the Environment/110

Unit 12

 Text A How to Survive a Disaster ( I )/117

 Text B How to Survive a Disaster ( II )/122

Unit 13

 Text A Bad Managers/129

 Text B Loyalty Has to Be Earned/133

Unit 14

 Text A The Same Language? /138

 Text B The Role of English in the 21st Century/142

Unit 15

 Text A The Curse of Vanishing Wealth/147

 Text B Marketing to Innocents/153

Unit 16

 Text A Looking to Eat Nokia's Lunch/158

 Text B House of Cards/164

Unit 17

 Text A Is America Losing at Globalization? /168

 Text B Common Wealth/173

Unit 18

 Text A How Intelligent Is Intelligence Testing? ( T )/181

 Text B How Intelligent Is Intelligence Testing? ( II )/188

Unit 19

 Text A On PlagiarJsm/192

 Text B The New Plagiarism:Seven Antidotes to Prevent Highway

    Robbery in an Electronic Age/197

Unit 20

 Text A Who Was More Important: Lincoln or Darwin? ( I )/203

 Text B Who Was More Important: Lincoln or Darwin? ( II )/209

Answer Keys/217