Like its best-selling predecessors, the fifth edition of "Our Times" is built entirely around "very" contemporary selections from a wide variety of "very" recent periodicals on intriguing topics of "very" current interest -- more than ninety percent published since 1996 . With a new profile of the Class of 2000 based on UCLA's national survey of college freshmen, the fifth edition of "Our Times" does even more to get students talking about where they stand in relation to their peers as well as to professional writers. And with plenty of selections that can be used as models and an even stronger focus on writing in the unique apparatus, "Our Times" shows students how to turn lively discussion about personal and public issues into effective writing.