Some of my dissatisfaction with this book is partially due to the fact that I picked up a class that had already begun, only to find out then that it had a textbook I hadn't read before, so take this with a grain of salt.
Who the heck has a reader that is meant to be for rhetoric and composition courses that doesn't ever speak about rhetoric or composition? That's not entirely fair. There are a few very interesting comics, which do address the writing process (very briefly), but that's it. This is a critical failing, as this book is obviously aimed at beginning writers, but it doesn't seem to bother itself with actual things that beginning writers will need to tackle.
It goes much further though. This text contains no student essays at all, so that a reader can understand something from their peers, and almost all of its essays are the kind of lyrical nonfiction that is beautiful, but isn't particularly useful for most students. Where are the critical essays, the academic articles, the works that make use of works cited pages and/or footnotes? They are completely lacking.
The idea of linking visuals with text is wonderful, and something I have been doing myself for years, and it's great to have a textbook incorporate it to its very core, but the selections here make for poor comparison/contrast most of the time, and since the written selections are so disparate to the kind of writing the students will be doing, it seems a waste.
There is really some wonderful writing contained in this book, and a student that reads it front to back will be exposed to a world of difference, which is great, but this is supposed to be a text to help introduce students to writing, and for that, it is terrible.