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The Best American Essays 1992
by Susan SontagHailed as the single most distinguished showcase for essays, The Best American Essays exhibits the finest writing from magazines and journals across the country. This year Susan Sontag has collected an extraordinary range of talent that includes such notables as Joan Didion, John Updike, Jamaica Kincaid, and Stanley Elkin.
The Best American Essays 1993
by Joseph EpsteinThis collection of essays on the most poignant and humorous issues of today features the writing of Ada Louise Huxtable, Ward Just, Oliver Sacks, Cynthia Ozick, Alex Haley, and Barbara Grizzuti Harrison.
The Best American Essays 1994
by Tracy KidderProvides outstanding essays and popular essays from 1994.
The Best American Essays 1995
by Jamaica KincaidThe 1995 edition has abundant essays drawn from periodicals across the country. Here are some of the finest pieces from the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker and Harper's Magazine written by some of today's finest prose stylists.
The Best American Essays 1996
by Geoffrey C. WardThis outstanding group of essays has a different twist--one that looks out instead of in--Amitav Ghosh visits New Delhi during a social turmoil; Change-Rae Lee welcomes readers into his kitchen; and there are essays by Nicholas Baker, Ian Frazier, and others.
The Best American Essays 1997
by Ian FrazierThis year, Ian Frazier provides an unusually humorous and unpredictable selection, featuring essays by some of our most respected writers, including Susan Sontag, Roy Blount, Jr., and Thomas McGuane.
The Best American Essays 1998
by Cynthia OzickThe Best American Essays 1998 features a captivating mix of people and prose, as guest editor Cynthia Ozick shapes a volume around the intricacies of human memory. The reflections and recollections of Saul Bellow, John Updike, Jamaica Kincaid, John McPhee, and Andre Dubus join company with many voices new to the series, as an astonishing variety of writers share their deepest thought on ecstasy and injury, ambition and failure, privacy and notoriety.
The Best American Essays 2000
by Robert Atwan Alan LightmanThese selected essays tackle an issue that is significant in the present. - How addicted are people to technology? Some essays are intimate. This collection celebrates the essays as an independent genre.
The Best American Essays 2001
by Kathleen NorrisThis year's Best American Essays is edited by the best-selling, award-winning writer Kathleen Norris, whose books include Dakota and The Virgin of Bennington. The writers in this volume invite us into hidden places: a surgical pathologists laboratory, the boxing gym where a college professor and his student learn unexpected lessons about discipline, pain, and growing to adulthood. There are many discoveries to be made here, and I gladly invite the reader to an uncommonly rich and rewarding book.
The Best American Essays 2003
by Anne FadimanThe Best American Essays 2003 has gathered provocative writings of the year. This book has subjects ranging from driving lessons to animal rights to citizenship in times of emergency.
The Best American Essays 2004
by Louis MenandSince its inception in 1915, the "Best American series" has become the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to the twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind.
The Best American Essays 2005
by Susan OrleanThe Best American series has been the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction since 1915. Each volume's series editor selects notable works from hundreds of periodicals. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the very best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected--and most popular--of its kind. The Best American Essays 2005 includes Roger Angell, Andrea Barrett, Jonathan Franzen, Ian Frazier, Edward Hoagland, Ted Kooser bull; Jonathan Lethem bull; Danielle Ofri, Oliver Sacks, Cathleen Schine, David Sedaris, Robert Stone, David Foster Wallace, and others Susan Orlean, guest editor, is the author of My Kind of Place, The Orchid Thief, The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup, and Saturday Night. A staff writer for The New Yorker since 1982, she has also written for Outside, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Vogue.
The Best American Essays 2005
by Susan OrleanThe Best American series has been the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction since 1915. Each volume's series editor selects notable works from hundreds of periodicals. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the very best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected--and most popular--of its kind. The Best American Essays 2005 includes Roger Angell; Andrea Barrett; Jonathan Franzen; Ian Frazier; Edward Hoagland; Ted Kooser; Jonathan Lethem; Danielle Ofri; Oliver Sacks; Cathleen Schine; David Sedaris; Robert Stone; David Foster Wallace; and others. Susan Orlean, guest editor, is the author of My Kind of Place, The Orchid Thief, The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup, and Saturday Night. A staff writer for The New Yorker since 1982, she has also written for Outside, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Vogue.
The Best American Essays 2006
by Lauren Slater"The essays in this volume are powerful, plainspoken meditations on birthing, dying, and all the business in between," writes Lauren Slater in her introduction to the 2006 edition. "They reflect the best of what we, as a singular species, have to offer, which is reflection in a context of kindness. The essays tell hard-won tales wrestled sometimes from great pain." The twenty powerful essays in this volume are culled from periodicals ranging from The Sun to The New Yorker, from Crab Orchard Review to Vanity Fair. In "Missing Bellow," Scott Turow reflects on the death of an author he never met, but one who "overpowered me in a way no other writer had." Adam Gopnik confronts a different kind of death, that of his five-year-old daughter's pet fish -- a demise that churns up nothing less than "the problem of consciousness and the plotline of Hitchock's Vertigo." A pet is center stage as well in Susan Orlean's witty and compassionate saga of a successful hunt for a stolen border collie. Poe Ballantine chronicles a raw-nerved pilgrimage in search of salvation, solace, and a pretty brunette, and Laurie Abraham, in "Kinsey and Me," journeys after the man who dared to plumb the mysteries of human desire. Marjorie Williams gives a harrowing yet luminous account of her life with cancer, and Michele Morano muses on the grammar of the subjunctive mood while proving that "in language, as in life, moods are complicated, but at least in language there are only two.
The Best American Essays 2007
by David Foster Wallace"The Best American Essays 2007" offers up the best essays of the year selected and introduced by David Foster Wallace.
The Best American Essays 2008
by Robert Atwan Adam GopnikEdited by The New Yorker's much-loved Adam Gopnik, this year's Best American Essays continues the laudable tradition of collecting the finest essays, "judiciously selected from countless publications" (Chicago Tribune), ensuring that the 2008 edition is another "kick-ass anthology" (Booklist).Contributors include Albert Goldbarth, Anthony Lane, Louis Menand, Ander Monson, and others.
The Best American Essays 2009
by Mary OliverThe Best American Essays 2009 offers up the best pieces of the year selected and introduced by Mary Oliver, author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning collection American Primitive and the National Book Award-winning New and Selected Poems.
The Best American Essays 2011: The Best American Series (The Best American Series)
by Edwidge DanticatThe acclaimed author of Breath, Eyes, Memory presents an anthology of personal essays by Hilton Als, Christopher Hitchens, Zadie Smith and others.In her selection process for this sterling volume, Edwidge Danticat considers the inherent vulnerability of the essay form—a vulnerability that seems all the more present in today&’s spotlighted public square. As she says in her introduction, &“when we insert our &‘I&’ (our eye) to search deeper into someone, something, or ourselves, we are always risking a yawn or a slap, indifference or disdain.&”Here are intimate personal essays that examine a range of vital topics, from cancer diagnosis to police brutality, and from devastating natural disasters to the dilemmas of modern medicine. All in all, &“the brave voices behind these experiences keep the pages turning&” (Kirkus Reviews).The Best American Essays 2011 includes entries by Hilton Als, Katy Butler, Toi Derricotte, Christopher Hitchens, Pico Iyer, Charlie LeDuff, Chang-Rae Lee, Lia Purpura, Zadie Smith, Reshma Memon Yaqub, and others.
The Best American Essays 2012 (The Best American Series)
by Malcolm Gladwell Francine Prose Jonathan Franzen Alan Lightman Mark Doty Sandra Tsing Loh Lauren Slater Benjamin AnastasNonfiction from Malcolm Gladwell, Francine Prose, Jonathan Franzen, and more: &“There is not a dud in the bunch. [An] exhilarating collection.&” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) Whether a personal reflection on a wife&’s decline from Alzheimer&’s, a critique of the overdiagnosis of mood disorders, a lighthearted look at menopause, a friend&’s commentary on David Foster Wallace&’s heartbreaking suicide, or a memoir of teaching underprivileged children, this collection highlights the best essays of the year with contributions from: Benjamin Anastas • Marcia Angell • Miah Arnold • Geoffrey Bent • Robert Boyers • Dudley Clendinen • Paul Collins • Mark Doty • Mark Edmundson • Joseph Epstein • Jonathan Franzen • Malcolm Gladwell • Peter Hessler • Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough • Garret Keizer • David J. Lawless • Alan Lightman • Sandra Tsing Loh • Ken Murray • Francine Prose • Richard Sennett • Lauren Slater • Jose Antonio Vargas • Wesley Yang &“A trove of fine writing on big issues.&” —Kirkus Reviews
The Best American Essays 2013 (The Best American Series)
by Cheryl Strayed, Robert AtwanCurated by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wild, this volume shares intimate perspectives from some of today&’s most acclaimed writers. As Cheryl Strayed explains in her introduction, &“the invisible, unwritten last line of every essay should be and nothing was ever the same again.&” The reader, in other words, should feel the ground shift, if even only a bit. In this edition of the acclaimed anthology series, Strayed has gathered twenty-six essays that each capture an inexorable, tectonic shift in life. Personal and deeply perceptive, this collection examines a broad range of life experiences—from a man&’s relationship with Mormonism to a woman&’s search for a serial killer; from listening to the music of Joni Mitchell to surviving five months at sea; from triaging injured soldiers to giving birth to a daughter; and much more.The Best American Essays 2013 includes entries by Alice Munro, Zadie Smith, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Dagoberto Gilb, Vicki Weiqi Yang, J.D. Daniels, Michelle Mirsky, and others.
The Best American Essays 2014 (The Best American Series)
by John Jeremiah SullivanThe acclaimed author of Pulphead collects &“21 of the year&’s most urgent and at times painfully truthful pieces of nonfiction published in the U.S.&” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). In our age of trigger warnings and jeopardized free expression, The Best American Essays 2014 does not shy away from shocking extremes, ambiguities, or dualities. As guest editor John Jeremiah Sullivan notes, the essay assumes many two-sided forms, and these diverse pieces capture all the conceptions of what an essay can be: the loose and the strict, the flourish and the finished, the try and the trial. Sullivan&’s choices embrace the high and the low, the memoirist&’s confession and the journalist s reportage, and all the gray area in between. From a hotel in Mongolia to a Clockwork Orange like Baltimore, from a Rome emergency room to Burning Man, these diverse pieces surprise and entertain, inform and titillate. The Best American Essays 2014 includes entries by Kristin Dombek, Dave Eggers, Leslie Jamison, Ariel Levy, Yiyun Li, Barry Lopez, Zadie Smith, Wells Tower, Emily Fox Gordon, James Wood, and others.
The Best American Essays 2015 (The Best American Series)
by Ariel Levy&“22 contributors explore a wide range of experiences&” in this &“illuminating, invaluable&” anthology edited by the author of Female Chauvinist Pigs (Publishers Weekly). Writing an essay is like catching a wave, posits guest editor Ariel Levy. To catch a wave, you need skill and nerve, not just moving water. The writers featured in this volume are certainly full of nerve, and have crafted a wide range of pieces awash in a diversity of moods, voices, and stances. Leaving an abusive marriage, parting with a younger self, losing your sanity to Fitbit, and even saying goodbye to a beloved pair of pants are just some of the experience probed by essays that are unified in the daring of their creation. As Levy notes, Writing around an idea you think is worthwhile—an idea you suspect is an insight—requires real audacity.&” The Best American Essays 2015 includes entries by Hilton Als, Roger Angell, Justin Cronin, Meghan Daum, Anthony Doerr, Margo Jefferson, David Sedaris, Zadie Smith, Rebecca Solnit and others.
The Best American Essays 2016 (The Best American Series)
by Jonathan FranzenThe National Book Award–winning author compiles a &“thought-provoking volume&” of essays by Joyce Carol Oates, Oliver Sacks, Jaquira Diaz and others (Publishers Weekly).As Jonathan Franzen writes in his introduction, his main criterion for selecting The Best American Essays 2016 &“was whether an author had taken a risk.&” The resulting volume showcases authorial risk in a variety of forms, from championing an unpopular opinion to the possibility of ruining a professional career, or irrevocably alienating one&’s family. What&’s gained are essential insights into aspects of the human condition that would otherwise remain concealed—from questions of queer identity, to the experience of a sibling&’s autism and relationships between students and college professors.The Best American Essays 2016 includes entries by Alexander Chee, Paul Crenshaw, Jaquira Diaz, Laura Kipnis, Amitava Kaumar, Sebastian Junger, Joyce Carol Oates, Oliver Sacks, George Steiner, Thomas Chatterton Williams, and others.
The Best American Essays 2017 (The Best American Series)
by Leslie Jamison, Robert AtwanThis anthology edited by the New York Times–bestselling author of The Empathy Exams offers &“essays that are challenging, passionate, sobering, and clever&” (Publishers Weekly). &“The essay is political—and politically useful, by which I mean humanizing and provocative—because of its commitment to nuance, its explorations of contingency, its spirit of unrest, its glee at overturned assumptions; because of the double helix of awe and distrust—faith and doubt—that structures its DNA,&” writes guest editor Leslie Jamison in her introduction to this volume. The essays she has compiled in The Best American Essays 2017 &“thrill toward complexity.&” From the Iraqi desert to an East Jerusalem refugee camp, and from the beginnings of the universe to the aftermath of a suicide attempt, these essays bring us, time and again, to the thorny intersection of personal experience and public discourse. The Best American Essays 2017 includes entries by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Lawrence Jackson, Rachel Kushner, Alan Lightman, Bernard Farai Matambo, Wesley Morris, Heather Sellers, Andrea Stuart, and others.
The Best American Essays 2018 (The Best American Series)
by Hilton AlsThe Pulitzer–Prize winning and Guggenheim-honored Hilton Als curates the best essays from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites, bringing &“the fierce style of street reading and the formal tradition of critical inquiry, reads culture, race, and gender&” (New York Times) to the task. &“The essay, like love, like life, is indefinable, but you know an essay when you see it, and you know a great one when you feel it, because it is concentrated life,&” writes Hilton Als in his introduction. Expertly guided by Als&’s instinct and intellect, The Best American Essays 2018 showcases great essays as well as irresistibly eclectic ones. Go undercover in North Korea, delve into the question of race in the novels of William Faulkner, hang out in the 1970s New York music scene, and take a family road trip cum art pilgrimage. These experiences and more immersive slices of concentrated life await.