The Best American essays.
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Published
New York : Boston : Ticknor & Fields ; Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin, 1986-.
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Valley Cottage Free Library - Adult Nonfiction
814 BES 2013
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814 BES 2013
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Valley Cottage Free Library - Adult Nonfiction
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814 BES 2014
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Valley Cottage Free Library - Adult Nonfiction
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Table of Contents
1986: The follies of writer worship / Julian Barnes
Not-knowing / Donald Barthelme
Flight from Byzantium / Joseph Brodsky
Heatherdown : a late imperialist memoir / Alexander Cockburn
The passing of jazz's old guard : remembering Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, and Sonny Stitt / Gerald Early
Of accidental judgments and casual slaughters / Kai Erikson
When the cockroach stood by the mickle wood / Robert Fitzgerald
China still lifes / William Gass
Nasty little facts / Stephen Jay Gould
Dressed to thrill / Anne Hollander
Morality and foreign policy / George F. Kennan
On boxing / Joyce Carol Oates
The first day of school : Washington Square, 1946 / Cynthia Ozick
The body of Bach / Edward Rothstein
Visions of the Pacific / Frederick Turner
On Italo Calvino / Gore Vidal
Julia / John Wain.
1987: Teacher / John Barth
What do you think of Ted Williams now? / Richard Ben Cramer
On writing a novel / John Gregory Dunne
Spring / Gretel Ehrlich
The case of Harry Houdini / Daniel Mark Epstein
They said you was high class / Joseph Epstein
"This guy wouldn't give you the parsley off his fish" / Gary Giddins
Winter / Donald Hall
Against joie de vivre / Phillip Lopate
The stone horse / Barry Lopez
The master builder / Elting E. Morison
The lay intellectual (apologia pro vita sua) / William Pfaff
Pictures / Samuel Pickering, Jr.
A stranger in Lolitaland / Gregor von Rezzori
Tools of torture : an essay on beauty and pain / Phyllis Rose
The inheritance of tools / Scott Russell Sanders
A higher horror of the whiteness : cocaine's coloring of the American psyche / Robert Stone
Rumors around town / Calvin Trillin
Tiger in the road! / Geoffrey C. Ward
Land of wizards / Tom Wolfe.
1988: London
1944 / Mary Lee Settle
Kinds of Water / Anne Carson
After Yitzl / Albert Goldbarth
Ikinawa : The bloodiest battle of all / William Manchester
The feeling of flying / Samuel Hynes
Gettysburg / Arthur C. Danto
Home / William Kittredge
Heroes among the barbarians / James McConkey
My two one-eyed coaches / George Garrett
Beacons burning down / Bernard Cooper
L'apres-midi de Mary Garden / Paul Horgan
The heart of the seasons / Elizabeth Hardwick
Dreaming in public : a Provincetown memoir / Susan Mitchell
On the pilgrim's path to Lourdes / Eleanor Munro
A Mask on the face of death / Richard Selzer
Walls : a journey to auburn / Kenneth A. McClane
Notes from the country club / Kimberly Wozencraft
Wadi-bashing in Arabia deserta / Russell Fraser
The Honorable member for Houghton / E.J. Kahe, Jr.
Reading philosophy at night / Charles Simic
1989: Playing chess with Arthur Koestler / Julian Barnes
A snapping turtle in June / Franklin Burroughs
Think about it / Frank Conroy
Insider baseball / Joan Didion
Schedules / Annie Dillard
The muses are heard / Stanley Elkin
Confessions of a low roller / Joseph Epstein
Accomodations / Richard Ford
Parade march from "That creaturely world" / Albert Goldbarth
Bones / Paul Gruchow
On not knowing the half of it: homage to telegraphist Jacobs / Christopher Hitchens
Heaven and nature / Edward Hoagland
Why stop? / Mary Hood
Who owns the West? / William Kittredge
Falling into life / Leonard Kriegel
Strawberries under ice / Davie Quammen
Oranges and sweet sister boy / Judy Ruiz
On being black and middle class / Shelby Steele
Keeping the future at bay / Robert Stone
The brave tailors of Maida / Gay Talese
Mystery in a Soviet library / Victor Zaslavsky
1990: Amenian journal / Michael Arlen
The paradoxes of creativity / Jacques Barzun
Intoxicated by my illness / Anatole Broyard
Shouting "fire!" / Alan M. Dershowitz
The Stunt pilot / Annie Dillard
At the Academy Awards / Stanley Elkin
A few kind words for envy / Joseph Epstein
The creation myths of Copperstown / Stephen Jay Gould
No wonder they call me a bitch / Ann Hodgman
The Vicksburg ghost / Sue Hubbell
The corpse in the mirror : the Warhol wake / Stuart Klawans
Vital signs / Natalie Rusz
The Fisherwoman's daughter / Ursula R. Le Guin
Raymond Carver, mentor / Jay McInerney
To Blacks and Jews : Hab Rachmones / James A. McPherson
I'm having trouble with my relationship / Leonard Michaels
Why mow? : the case against lawns / Michael Pollan
Talking AIDS to death / Randy Shilts
Portrait of the artist as a lion on stilts / Paul West
Save the Whales, screw the shrimp / Joy Williams
Stalking the billion-footed beast / Tom Wolfe
1991: Random reflections of a second-rate mind / Woody Allen
The female body / Margaret Atwood
The femal e body / Joh Updike
Silent dancing / Judith Ortiz Cofer
Running the Table / Frank Conroy
Life with daughters: Watching the Miss America Pageant / Gerald Early
This autumn morning / Gretel Ehrlich
Wounded chevy at Wounded Knee / Diana Hume George
Counters and cable cars / Stephen Jay Gould
New York City: Crash course / Elizabeth Hardwick
Kubota / Garrett Hongo
Maintenance / Naomi Shihab Nye
Late victorians / Richard Rodriquez
Seeking home / Dorien Ross
Mosaic on waking / Mark Budman
The ideal particle and the great unconformity / Reg Saner
Mother Tongue / Amy Tan
At the Buffalo Bill Museum - June 1988 / Jane Tompkins
On being white, female, and born in Bensonhurst - Marianna De Marco Torgovinick
Questions of conquest / Mario Vargas Llosa
The killing game / Joy Willims
1992: Short talks / Anne Carson
Sentimental journeys / Joan Didion
Standards / E.L. Doctorow
Liberty and pornography / Ronald Dworkin
Some overrated masterpieces / Stanley Elkin
Thinking about killing: Hamlet and the paths among the passions / Philip Fisher
Exile / William H. Gass
Audubon's passion / Adam Gopnik
Canon, syllabus, list: a note on the pedagogic imaginary / John Guillory
Wind from the prairie / Elizabeth Hardwick
What's wrong with animal rights / Vicki Hearne
On seeing England for the first time / Jamacia Kincaid
Opera and homosexuality: seven arias / Wayne Koestenbaum
The zipper / Leonard Michaels
Victims, all? / David Rieff
Look away, Dixie Land / Patricia Storace
Needs / George W.S. Trow
First things first / John Updike
The mystery of Mickey Mouse / John Updike
Lincoln up close / Gore Vidal
1993: Hair / Marcia Aldrich
Mozart and the Wolf Gang / Anthony Burgess
Yes, Oswald alone Killed Kennedy / Jacob Cohen
Their Malcolm, my problem / Gerald Early
Afterthoughts / Jean Ervin
Invisible man / Lawrence Otis Graham
Cuteness / Daniel Harris
P.C. on the grill / Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
Rolex / Diane Johnson
When it's over over there / Ward Just
Psychiatric misadventures / Paul R. McHugh
A memory of two fathers / Shaun O'Connell
Alfred Chester's wig / Cynthia Ozick
The case for human beings / Thomas Palmer
You must / James Salter
Wayland / Scott Russell Sanders
The truth about growing old / Robert Sherrill
Trivia tea; baseball as balm / Floyd Skloot
The new sovereignty / Shelby Steele
Crickets, bats, cats & chaos / Lewis Thomas
How to get out of a locked trunk / Phillip Weiss
1994: Survival of the fittest / Hicholson Baker
Trucking through the AIDS belt / Ted Conover
Does Homer have legs? / David Denby
Tracks and ties / Andrew Dubus III
Out of one's tree / Stanley Elkin
Skunk dream / Louise Erdrich
The Frankest interview yet / Ian Frazier
The last shot / Darcy Frey
Death in Venice / Adam Gopnik
Cordelia's dilemma / Stephen Jay Gould
Mirrorings / Lucy Grealy
Can an ape tell
a joke? / Vicki Hearne
Alien Soil / Jamacia Kincaid
Escape from Moscow / Mark Kramer
The turn / William Langewiesche
Ivy day in the empty room / James A McPherson
Lots / S. Oso
Rushdie in the Louvre / Cynthia Ozick
Striptease / Lauren Slater
Chatwin revisited / Paul Theoux
The disposable rocket / John Updike
1995: Homage to Marcus Aurelius / Joseph Brodsky
Eros at sea / Joel Agee
Dying: an update / Harold Brodkey
When negative meets positive / Dudley Clendinen
Burl's / Bernard Cooper
Gots is what you got / W.S. Di Piero
Endou / Josephine Foo
The art of self / William H. Gass
In the kitchen / Henry Louise Gates, Jr.
Strange perfume / Edward Hoagland
Salt / Diana Kappel-Smith
Jicamma, without expectation / Maxine Kumin
Saturday night, and Sunday morning / James A. McPherson
Waiting / Edna O'Brien
The break / Cynthia Ozick
Six days; some rememberings / Grace Paley
The necessity of poetry / Charles Simic
Father stories / John Edgar Wideman
Civilian / Tobias Wolff
Counting at dusk (why poetry matters when the century ends) / Elaine Scarry
1996: Cather and the academy / Joan Acocella
Books as furniture / Nicholson Baker
Midnight in the garden of good and Elvis / Julie Baumgold
Influenza 1918 / Jane Brox
Trouble with wilderness / William Cronon
Hooked / Stanley Crouch
Understanding Afrocentrism / Gerald Early
Art of the nap / Joseph Epstein
Lesson from Michelangelo / James Fenton
Take the F / Ian Frazier
Ghosts of Mrs. Gandhi
Amitav Ghosh
Wonderland / Adam Gopnik
Black widow / Gordon Grice
Brightness visible / Edward Hoagland
Coming home / Change-Rae Lee
Crabcakes / James Alan McPherson
They all just went away / Joyce Carol Oates
Owls / Mary Oliver
Slouching toward Washington / Darryl Pinckney
Last Call of the Wild / Jonathan Raban
One violent crime / Bruce Shapiro
Case of the great pox / William Styron, Grace Paley
The necessity of poetry / Charles Simic
Father stories / John Edgar Wideman
Civilian / Tobias Wolfe
Counting at dusk (why poetry matters when the century ends / Elaine Scarry
1997: Notes on my mother / Hilton Als
The fourth state of matter / Jo Ann Beard
First tell me what kind of reader / Roy Blout, Jr.
Labyrinthine / Bernard Cooper
Legends of the fall / Louis de Bernieres
Who shot Johnny? / Debra Dickerson
In the face / Richard Ford
Rat patriot: a saga / Frank Gannon
Northeast direct / Dagoberto Gilb
We are still only human / Verlyn Klinkenborg
Ring leader / Natalie Kusz
Don't get comfortable / Nation Leslie
Twenty-fish days / Thomas McGuane
Backlogs of history / Cullen Murphy
A drugstore Eden / Cynthia Ozick
My father / Luke Chapman Reilly
Living in tongues / Luc Sante
My habit / Paul Sheehan
Dinner at Uncle Boris's / Charles Simic
Black swans / Lauren Slater
A century of cinema / Susan Sontag
All in Havana / Gay Talese
The gangster we are all looking for / Le Thi Diem Thuy
The case against babies / Joy Williams
1998: The telephone / Anwar F. Accawl
Shadow cities / Andre Aciman
How I learned to speak Italian / Helen Barolini
Graven images / Saul Bellow
The merely very good / Jeremy Bernstein
States of reading / Sven Birkerts
What is realism? / J.M. Coetzee
Altar boy / Brian Doyle
Witness / Andre Dubus
Will you still feed me? / Joseph Epstein
Someplace in Queens / Ian Frazier
The test of time / William H. Gass
- Two baths / Elizabeth Graver
A peaceable kingdom / Edward Hoagland
In history / Jamaica Kincaid
Nearing ninety / William Maxwell
Silk parachute / John McPhee
Building the house / Mary Oliver
Orion the hunter / Tim Robinson
Water babies
Oliver Sacks
The page turner / Lynne Sharon Schwartz
Soldier's heart / Louis Simpson
A visit to Camelot / Diana Trilling
Lost art / John Updike
Real life / James Wood
1999: In search of Proust / Andre Aciman
Torch Song / Charles Bowden
Compression Wood / Franklin Burroughs
Visitor / Michael W. Cox
Last words / Joan Didon
Forthe time being / Annie Dillard
The meteorites / Brian Doyle
A lovely sort of lower purpose / Ian Fraiser
Victoria / Dagoberto Gilb
Still life / Mary Gordon
A week in the world / Patricia Hampl
The country below / Barbara Hurd
The lion and me / Jogh Lahr
Making it up / Hiliary Masters
On the Fedela Road / John McNeel
American Heartworm / Ben Metcalf
Before air conditioning / Arthur Miller
After Amnesia / Joyce Carol Oates
The impious impatience of Job / Cynthia Ozick
Planet of weeds / David Quammen
On silence / Daisy Eunyoune Rhau
Beauty / Scott Russell Sanders
Hitler's couch / Mark Slouka
What's inside you, brother / Toure
Folding the Times / George W. S. Trow
2000: The last time I saw Paris / Andre Andre Aciman
In distrust of movements / Wendell Berry
The joys and perils of Victimhood / Ian Buruma
A son in shadow / Fred D'aguilar
Westbury court / Edwidge Danticat
In defense of the book / William H. Gass
Rome: the visible city / Mary Gordon
Earth's eye / Edward Hoagland
Those words that echo...echo...echo...through life / Jamaica Kincaid
If you are what you eat, then what am I? / Geeta Kothari
The resurrectionist / Richard McCann
The synthetic sublime / Cynthia Ozick
The force of spirit / Scott Russell Sanders
At a certain age / Lynne Sharon Schwartz
The singer solution to world poverty / Peter Singer
Gray area: thinking with a damaged brain / Floyd Skoolt
Listening for silence / Mark Slouka
Heroine / Cheryl Strayed
What's so bad about hate? / Andrew Sullivan
A designer universe? / Steven Weinberg
A shark in the mind of one contemplating wilderness / Terry Tempest Williams
2001: In the memory mines / Diane Ackerman
How to pray: reverence, stories, and the Rebbe's dream / Ben Birnbaum
The bone garden of desire / Charles Bowden
Travels with R.L.S. / James Campbell
Mail / Anne Fadiman
The work of mourning / Francine du Piessix Gray
Vin Laforge / Jeffrey Heiman
Calliope Times / Edward Hoagland
India's American imports / Adam Hochschild
Refugium / Barbara Hurd
On impact / Stephen King
Blue machinery of summer / Yusef Komunyakaa
The midnight tour / Marcus Laffey
Facing the village / Lenore Look
Book marks / Rebeca McClanahan
Trouble in the tribe / Daphne Merkin
Provincetown / David Michaelis
Brain-cell memories / Spencer Nadler
Dust / Mary Oliver
Dear Harper: a letter to a godchild about God / Reynolds Price
The fineness of things / Tim Robinson
Cut time / Carlo Rotella
Exquisite corpse / Ashraf Rushdy
The last word / Earl Shorris
On being breathless / Bert O. States
Upside down and backward / William T. Vollman
2002: The tenth muse / Jacques Barzun
Turning point / Rudolph Chelminski
Winner take nothing / Bernard Cooper
The countess of Stanlein Restored / Nicholas Delbanco
Welcome to cancerland / Barbara Ehrenriech
My father's brain / Jonathan Franzen
Final cut / Atul Gawande
Who we are / David Halberstam
For patriot dreams / Chrisotpher Hitchens
The lion in winter / Sebastian Junger
Fire / Amy Kolen
The anti-Jefferson / Andrew Levy
The price we pay / Adam Mayblum
College: the end of the golden age / Louis Menand
Out of the ordinary / Cullen Murphy
Merced / Danielle Ofri
Busted in New York / Darryle Pinckney
Word on the street / Richard Price and Anne Hudson-Price
Matriculation fixation / Joe Queenan
Inside the bunker/ John Scak
Why literature? / Mario Vargas Llosa
The meaning of Timothe McVeigh / Gore Vidal
The dramaturgy of death / Garry Willis
Moonrise / Penny Wolfson
2003: Lavender / Andre Aciman
I bought a bed / Donald Antrim
Lost cities / Rachel Cohen
Yes / Brian Doyle
Ina snob-free zone / Joseph Epstein
Memoria ex machina / Marshall Jon Fisher
Home alone / Caitlin Flanagan
Researchers say / Ian Frazier
The Learning curve / Atul Gawande
Bumping into Mr. Ravioli / Adam Gopnik
The debacle / Francine Du Plessix Gray
Circus music / Edward Hoagland
F.P. / Myra Jehlen
The reporter's kitchen / Jane Kramer
Wooden Dollar / Ben Metcalf
A delivery for Fred Astaire / Frederic Morton
An animal's place / Michael Pollan
Learning to drive / Katha Pollitt
Citizenship in emergency / Elaine Scarry
Looking at war / Susan Sontag
The habit / Francis Spufford
The love of my life / Cheryl Strayed
Swann song / Judith Thurman
Whose war / John Edgar Wideman
2004: Foreword / Robert Atwan
Introduction / Louis Menand
America, look at your shame / James Agee
Envy / Kathryn Chetkovich
The last Americans / Jared Diamond
The Arctic Hedonist / Anne Fadiman
Caught / Jonathan Franzen
The unreal thing / Adam Gopnik
A sudden illness / Laura Hillenbrand
Passover in Baghdad / Tim Judah
My 80's / Wayne Koestenbaum
My Yiddish / Leonard Mori
Lifelike / Susan Orlean
Rock 101 / Ales Ross
The mind's eye / Oliver Sacks
My lost city / Luc Sante
Arrow and wound / Mark Slouka
My father is a book / Jana Malamud Smith
Bullet in my neck / Gerald Stern
Amor Perdido / Tennessee Williams
An enlarged heart / Cynthia Zarin
Biographical notes
Notable essays of 2002
2005: Foreword Robert Atwan
Introduction / Susan Orlean
La vie en rose / Roger Angell
The sea of information / Andrea Barrett
Storm county / Paul Crenshaw
Joyas voladoras / Brian Doyle
Sister Bernadette's barking dog / Kitty Burns Florey
The comfort zone / Jonathan Franzen
If memory doesn't serve / Ian Frazier
Against exercise / Mark Greif
Small silences / Edward Hoagland
- Small rooms in time / Ted Kooser
Speak, hoyt-schermerhorn/ Jonathan Lethem
Mastering the art of French cooking / E.J. Levy
Contributor's note / Michael Martone
My friend Lodovico / David Masello
Living will / Danielle Ofri
Dog days / Sam Pickering
Speed / Oliver Sacks
Dog trouble / Cathleen Schine
Old faithful / David Sedaris
Six seconds / Paula Speck
Skill display in birding groups / Bert O. States
The prince of possibility / Robert Stone
Dining with robots / Ellen Ullman
Consider the lobster / David Foster Wallace
Satin worship / Holly Welker
2007: Foreword / Robert Atwan
Introduction; deciderization 2007 - a special report / David Foster Wallace
Werner / Jo Ann Beard
The freedom to offend / Ian Burma
Iraq: the war of the imagination / Mark Danner
Fathead's hard times / W.S. Di Piero
An orgy of power / George Gessert
What the dog saw / Malcolm Gladwell
Afternoon of the sex children / Mark Greif
Operation Gomorrah / Marione Ingram
Loaded / Garret Keizer
Petrified / John Lahr
Name that tone / Louis Menand
Shakers / Danie Orozco
Our from Xanadu / Cynthia Ozick
Passion flowers in winter / Molly Peacock
In the Mosque of Imam Ali / Phillip Robertson
Disappointment / Richard Rodriguez
Rules of Engagement / Elaine Scarry - A carnivore's Credo / Roger Scruton
What Should a billionaire give - and what should you? / Peter Singer
Dragon slayers / Jerald Walker
Apocalypse now / Edward O. Wilson
Contributor's notes
Notable essays of 2006
2009: Taking a reading / Sue Allison
(En)trance / Chris Arthur
Portrait of a masked man / John Berger
Faustian economics / Wendell Berry
The greatest nature essay ever / Brian Doyle
Cherish this ectasy / David James Duncan
The dark art of description / Patricia Hampl
And such small deer / Garret Keizer
Our vanishing night / Verlyn Klinkenborg
You be the moon / Amy Leach
The mansion: a subprime parable / Michael Lewis
Madre de dios / Barry Lopez
Faint music / James Marcus
Cuss time / Jill McCorkle
Dog is our copilot / Kathryn Miles
Return to Hayneville / Gregory Orr
Ghost writers / Cynthia Ozick
The God of the desert / Richard Rodriguez
Shipwrecked / Janna Malamud Smith
The Writer in winter / John Updike
First / Ryan Van Meter
The mechanics of being / Jerald Walker
2010: Who killed Tolstoy? / Elif Batuman
the bad lion / Toni Bentley
the dead book / Jane Churchon
irreconcilable dissonance / Brian Doyle
the elegant eyeball / John Gamel
how Einstein divided America's Jews / Walter Isaacson
lunching on Olympus / Steven L. Isenberg
me, myself, and I / Jane Kramer
when writers speak / Arthur Krystal
a rake's progress / Matt Labash
Brooklyn the unknowable / Phillip Lopate
on John Updike / Ian McEwan
my genome, my self / Steven Pinker
gyromancy / Ron Rindo
guy walks into a bar car / David Sedaris
speaking in tongues / Zadie Smith
rediscovering Central Asia / S. Frederick Starr
Gettysburg regress / John H. Summers
fatheralong / John Edgar Wideman
daredevil / Garry Wills
a fine rage / James Wood.
2011: Buddy Ebsen / Als. Hilton
Port-au-Prince / Mischa Berlinski
What broke my father's heart / Katy Butler
Auscultation / Steven Church
After the ice / Paul Crenshaw
Beds / Toi Derricotte
Grieving / Meenakshi Gigi Durham
A-LOC / Bernadette Esposito
Topic of cancer / Christopher Hitchens
Chapels / Pico Iver
Long distance / Victor LaValle
What killed Aiyana Stanley-Jones? / Charlie LeDuff
Magical dinners / Chang-rae-lee
What really happened / Madge McKeithen
Rude am I in my speech / Caryl Phillips
Lucky girl / Bridgett Potter
There are things awry here / Lia Purpura
Patient / Rachel Riederer
Pearl, upward / Patricia Smith
Generation why? / Zadie Smith
Travels with my ex / Susan Straight
A personal essay by a personal essay / Christy Vannoy
Unprepared / Jerald Walker
Washing / Reshma Memon.
2012: The foul reign of "self-reliance" / Benjamin Anastas
The crazy state of psychiatry / Marcia Angell
You owe me / Miah Arnold
Edward Hopper and the geometry of despair / Geoffrey Bent
A beauty / Robert Boyers
The good short life / Dudley Clendinen
Vanishing act / Paul Collins
Insatiable / Mark Doty
Who are you and what are you doing here? / Mark Edmundson
Duh, bor-ing / Joseph Epstein
Farther away / Jonathan Franzen
Creation myth / Malcolm Gladwell
Dr. Don / Peter Hessler
Objects of affection / Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough
Getting schooled / Garret Keizer
My father/my husband / David J. Lawless
The accidental universe / Alan Lightman
The bitch is back / Sandra Tsing Loh
How doctors die / Ken Murray
Other women / Francine Prose
Humanism / Richard Sennett
Killing my body to save my mind / Lauren Slater
Outlaw / Jose Antonio Vargas
Paper tigers / Wesley Yang.
2013: Free rent at the totalitarian hotel / Poe Ballantine
Night / Alice Munro
Sometimes a romantic notion / Richard Schmitt
Highway of lost girls / Vanessa Veselka
Keeper of the flame / Matthew Vollmer
Breeds of America / William Melvin Kelley
My father's women / Mako Yoshikawa
Confessions of an ex-Mormon / Walter Kirn
I'm jumping off the bridge / Kevin Sampsell
Pigeons / Eileen Pollack
Triage / Jon Kerstetter
The art of being born / Marcia Aldrich
What happens in hell / Charles Baxter
The exhibit will be so marked / Ander Monson
The girls in my town / Angela Morales
Some notes on attunement / Zadie Smith
His last game / Brian Doyle
When they let them bleed / Tod Goldberg
Field notes on hair / Vicki Weiqi Yang
Letter from Majorca / J.D. Daniels
Ghost estates / John Jeremiah Sullivan
Channel B / Megan Stielstra
A little bit of fun before he died / Dagoberto Gilb
Epilogue: Deadkidistan / Michelle Mirsky
El Camino Doloroso / David Searcy
The book of knowledge / Steven Harvey.
2014: A matter of life and death / Timothy Aubry
Strange beads / Wendy Brenner
The final day in Rome / John H. Culver
Letter from Williamsburg / Kristin Dombek
The man at the river / Dave Eggers
At sixty-five / Emily Fox Gordon
On enmity / Mary Gordon
Letter from Greenwich Village / Vivian Gornick
Slickheads / Lawrence Jackson
The devil's bait / Leslie Jamison
Thanksgiving in Mongolia / Ariel Levy
Dear friend, from my life I write to you in your life / Yiyun Li
Sliver of sky / Barry Lopez
Someone else / Chris Offutt
Joy / Zadie Smith
Little X / Elizabeth Tallent
The old man at Burning Man / Wells Tower
How to make a slave / Jerald Walker
On being introduced / Paul West
Becoming them / James Wood
Legend : Willem de Kooning / Baron Wormser.
2015: Foreword: of essays and essayists / Robert Atwan
Introduction / Ariel Levy
Islands / Hilton Als
This old man / Roger Angell
Charade / Kendra Atleework
A message to the twenty-first century / Isaiah Berlin
Strange days / Sven Birkerts
Vision / Tiffany Briere
My daughter and God / Justin Cronin
Difference maker / Meghan Daum
Thing with feathers that perches in the soul / Anthony Doerr
The crooked ladder / Malcolm Gladwell
65 / Mark Jacobson
Scenes from a life in Negroland / Margo Jefferson
Smuggler / Philip Kennicott
A man and his cat / Tim Kreider
The loudproof room / Kate Lebo
My grandma the poisoner / John Reed
Reflections on indexing my lynching book / Ashraf H.A. Rushdy
Stepping out / David Sedaris
Find your beach / Zadie Smith
Arrival gates / Rebecca Solnit
My uniform / Cheryl Strayed
It will look like a sunset / Kelly Sundberg
Notable essays and literary nonfiction of 2014 / selected by Robert Atwan.
2016: Bajadas / Francisco Cantú
Girl / Alexanter Chee
Against honeymoons / Charles Comey
Names / Paul Crenshaw
Ordinary girls / Jaquira Díaz
My father and the wine / Irina Dumitrescu
My heart lies between "the fleet" and "all the ships" / Ela Harrison
The bonds of battle / Sebastian Junger
Sexual paranoia / Laura Kipnis
Thin places / Jordan Kisner
Pyre / Amitava Kumar
Of human carnage / Richard M. Lange
Bastards / Lee Martin
Family tradition / Lisa Nikolidakis
The lost sister : an elegy / Joyce Carol Oates
Right/left : a triptych / Marsha Pomerantz
Big night / Jill Sisson Quinn
Killing like they do in the movies / Justin Phillip Reed
A general feeling of disorder / Oliver Sacks
In praise of contempt / Katherine E. Standefer
The eleventh commandment / George Steiner
Namesake / Mason Stokes
Black and blue and blond / Thomas Chatterton Williams.
2017: Two shallow graves / Jason Armet
The weight of James Arthur Baldwin / Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah
White horse / Eliese Colette Goldbach
The city that bleeds / Lawrence Jackson
"We are ophans here" / Rachel Kushner
What comes before the big bang? / Alan Lightman
Cost of living / Emily Maloney
If I only had a leg / Greg Marshall
Working the city / Bernard Farai Matambo
Sparrow needy / Kenneth A. McClane
The book of the dead / Catherine Venable Moore
Last taboo / Wesley Morris
Indigent disposition / Christopher Notarnicola
Dispatch from flyover country / Meghan O'Gieblyn
The reader is the protagonist / Karen Palmer
H / Sarah Resnick
Haywire / Heather Sellers
Travels in Pornland / Andrea Stuart
Revenge of the mouthbreathers: a smoker's manifesto / June Thunderstorm
Snakebit / Alia Volz.
2019: Comforting myths / Alameddine, Rabih
We are not the resistance / Alexander, Michelle
Obituary for dead languages / Altfeld, Heather
Come heat and high water / Ariza, Mario Alejandro
Getting it twisted / Asim, Jabari
Autobiography of my novel / Chee, Alexander
Is all writing environmental writing? / Dungy, Camille T.
Stories of a life / Gessen, Masha
My father says he's a "targeted individual" / Guerrero, Jean
On likability / Johnson, Lacy M.
Guns in the family / Johnson, Walter
How to write about a vanishing world / Kolbert, Elizabeth
Forever gone / Lanham, J. Drew
Men are more afraid than ever / Loofbourow, Lili
Silence breaking woman / Mailhot, Terese Marie
When a person goes missing / Martin, Dawn Lundy
Autobiography of an Iceheart / Pyle, Kai Monosh
Death of an English major / Taylor, Gary
The rage of the Incels / Tolentino, Jia
In the maze / Tortorici, Dayna.
2020: How to bartend / Rabih Alameddine
Ghost museum / Elvis Bego
Driving as metaphor / Rachel Cusk
The humanoid stain / Barbara Ehrenreich
After the three-moon era / Gary Fincke
Cosmic latte / Ron Huett
A street full of splendid strangers / Leslie Jamison
A letter to Robinson Crusoe / Jamaica Kincaid
Maly Trostinets / Joseph Leo Koerner
Body language / Alex Marzano-Lesnevich
A thing about cancer / Clinton Crockett Peters
The other Leopold / Susan Fox Rogers
To grieve is to carry another time / Matthew Salesses
77 Sunset me / Peter Schjeldahl
Under the sign of Susan / A. O. Scott
Semantic drift / Lionel Shriver
Ode al vento occidentale / Mark Sullivan
Holiday review / Mark Sundeen
My pink lake and other digressions / Alison Townsend
Bed / David L. Ulin
Breathe / Jerald Walker
The unfound door / Stephanie Powell Watts
Soul-error / Philip Weinstein
Was Shakespeare a woman? / Elizabeth Winkler.
2021: The Trayvon generation / Elizabeth Alexander, from The New Yorker
Homecoming / Hilton Als, from The New Yorker
The broken country / Molly McCully Brown, from Virginia Quarterly Review
Acceptance parenting / Agnes Callard, from The Point
The kitchen is closed / Gabrielle Hamilton, from The New York Times Magazine
Bent arrows: on anticipation of my approaching disappearance / Tony Hoagland, from Ploughshares
Vicious cycles / Greg Jackson, from Harper's Magazine
Clarity / Ruchir Joshi, from Granta
Oh Latitudo / Amy Leach, from Granta
Insane after coronavirus? / Patricia Lockwood, from London Review of Books
Love in a time of terror / Barry Lopez. from Literary Hub
What I learned when my husband got sick with coronavirus / Jessica Lustig, from The New York Times Magazine
What money can't buy / Dawn Lundy Martin, from Ploughshares
Two women / Claire Messud, from A Public Space
My mustache / Wesley Morris, from The New Yorker Magazine
Apparent / Beth Nguyen, from The Paris Review
The designated mourner / Fintan O'Toole, from The New York Review of Books
Going postal / Max Read, from Bookforum
In orbit / Dariel Suarez, from The Threepenny Review
Witness and respair / Jesmyn Ward, from Vanity Fair.
2022: Abasement / Brian Blanchfield
Drinking story / Elissa Washuta
Fire and ice / Debra Gwartney
Ghosts / Vauhini Vara
The wild, sublime body / Melissa Febos
Baby yeah / Anthony Veasna So
The Gye, the no-name hair salon, the coup d'©tat, and the small dreamers / Jung Hae Chae
It had to be gold / Justin Torress
Futurity / Alex Marzano-Lesnevich
Her kind / Naomi A. Jackson
Ghost bread / Angelique Stevens
The gamble / Lina Mounzer
The wrong Jason Brown / Jason Brown
Between these lives, Azeroth / Tanner Akoni Laguatan
Among men / Calvin Gimpelevich
China brain / Andrea Long Chu
What she would always and should always be doing / Kaitlyn Greenidge
My gentile region / Gary Shteyngart
Anatomy of a botched assimilation / Jesus Quintero
Mother country / Elias Rodriques
At the bend of the road / Aube Rey Lescure
If you ever find yourself / Erica J. Simpson
The lost list / Ryan Bradley
Contributor's notes
Notable essays and literary nonfiction of 2021
Notable special issues of 2021.
2023: When we were boys / Ciara Alfaro
Any kind of leaving / Jillian Barnet
Fat man and little boy / Sylvie Baumgartel
Bidders of the din / Eric Borsuk
We were hungry / Chris Dennis
Ms. Daylily / Xujun Eberlein
The rough ride / Sandra Hager Eliason
Concision: a sprawl / George Estreich
Revelation at the food bank / Merrill Joan Gerber
Siri tells a joke / Debra Gwartney
On aging / Edward Hoagland
Gender: a melee / Laura Kipnis
An archaeological inquest / Phillip Lopate
A thousand gentle smotherings / Celeste Marcus
A fist of muscle / Sam Meekings
Life and story / Sigrid Nunez
Eat prey love / Kathryn Schulz
Thirteen ways of listening to the rain / Robert Anthony Siegel
Dreamers awaken / Scott Spencer
Care credit / Angelique Stevens
The Americas they left me / David Treuer
Contributors' notes
Notable essays and literary nonfiction of 2022
Notable special issues of 2022.
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More Details
Published
New York : Boston : Ticknor & Fields ; Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin, 1986-.
Format
Serial
Physical Desc
volumes ; 22 cm.
Language
English
Notes
Description
Presents an anthology of the best literary essays published in the past year, selected from American periodicals.
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Citations
APA Citation, 7th Edition (style guide)
(1986). The Best American essays . Ticknor & Fields ; Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation, 17th Edition (style guide)1986. The Best American Essays. Ticknor & Fields ; Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities (Notes and Bibliography) Citation, 17th Edition (style guide)The Best American Essays Ticknor & Fields ; Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin, 1986.
MLA Citation, 9th Edition (style guide)The Best American Essays Ticknor & Fields ; Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin, 1986.
Note! Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy. Citation formats are based on standards as of August 2021.