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The Best American
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The provocative and best-selling  author Christopher Hitchens takes the helm of the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this perennial favorite that is "reliable and yet still surprising--the best of the best" (Kirkus Reviews).

Foreword by Robert Atwan

Introduction by Christopher Hitchens

The Murder of Leo Tolstoy by Elif Batuman from Harper's
The Bad Lion by Toni Bentley from The New York Review of Books
The Dead Book by Jane Churchon from The Sun
Irreconcilable Dissonance by Brian Doyle from Oregon Humanities
The Elegant Eyeball by John Gamel from Alaska Quarterly Review
How Einstein Divided America's Jews by Walter Isaacson from The Atlantic
Lunching on Olympus by Steven L. Isenberg from The American Scholar
Me, Myself, and I by Jane Kramer from The New Yorker
When Writers Speak by Arthur Krystal from The New York Times Book Review
A Rake's Progress by Matt Labash from The Weekly Standard
Brooklyn the Unknowable by Phillip Lopate from Harvard Review
On John Updike by Ian Mcewan from The New York Review of Books
My Genome, My Self by Steven Pinker from The New York Times Magazine
Gyromancy by Ron Rindo from The Gettysburg Review
Guy Walks Into a Bar Car by David Sedaris from The New Yorker
Speaking in Tongues by Zadie Smith from The New York Review of Books
Rediscovering Central Asia by S. Frederick Starr from Wilson Quarterly
Gettysburg Regress by John Summers from The New Republic
Fatheralong by John Edgar Wideman from Harper's
Daredevil by Garry Wills from The Atlantic
A Fine Range by James Wood from The New Yorker
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Other distinguished submissions on this topic, selected by the series editor.

A
A.S. Hamrah A Cottage for Sale, from The Baffler, Vol. 2 No. 1.
A. Trevor Sutton Modern Love: The Findings of a Sorority Chaplain, from Relief, Spring.
Abraham Verghese A Touch of Sense, from Health Affairs, Jul/Aug.
Adam Gopnik The Fifth Blade, from The New Yorker, May 11.
Adam Phillips On What is Fundamental, from Salmagundi, Spring/Summer.
Akiko Bush Weeding the River, from TriQuarterly, 133.
Alan Trachtenberg Images, Inc.: Visual Domains of the Corporation, from The Hedgehog Review, Summer.
Alex Byrne God, from Boston Review, Jan/Feb.
Alison A. Chapman Milton's Captive Audience: Teaching Paradise Lost in a Maximum Security Prison, from PMS, Number Nine.
Alyce Miller All My Children, from Ploughshares, Fall.
Amin Ahmad 205 Lower Circular Road, from Harvard Review, No. 37.
Amitai Etzioni Spent, from The New Republic, June 17.
Amitava Kumar A Collaborator in Kashmir, from PEN America 10.
Amy Leach In Which the River Makes Off with Three Stationary Characters, from The Iowa Review, Fall.
Ana Maria Spagna The Seam, from Under the Sun, Summer.
Ander Monson The Essay Vanishes, from Indiana Review, Summer.
Anisse-Marie Gross Forevertron, from Bellingham Review, Vol. XXXII issue 61.
Andrew D. Cohen Television Days, from The Missouri Review, Winter.
Andrew Santella Happiness Is, from Notre Dame Magazine, Winter.
Ann Hood The Promise of Purple, from The Washington Post Magazine, November 22.
Anne Goldman Double Vision, from The Gettysburg Review, Summer.
Anne Panning Untranslatable, from IWest Branch, Spring/Summer.
Askold Melnyczuk Turbulence, from Love: A Reckoning, Ep;phany, Fall/Winter.
Atul Gawande Hellhole, from The New Yorker, March 30.
Atul Gawande The Cost Conundrum, from The New Yorker, June 1.
B
Barney Rosset Remembering Samuel Beckett, from Conjunctions: 53.
Barry Lopez Notes from the Earth, from The American Scholar, Autumn.
Barry Schwartz Tyranny for the Commons Man, from The National Interest, July/August.
Ben Gibberd Jerry, from Journal of Religion & Health, Vol. 48 No. 4 Dec.
Ben Fountain The Night Shift, from New Letters, Vol. 75 Nos. 2 & 3.
Benjamin Busah Bearing Arms, from Harper's, February.
Bernard Cooper A Thousand Drops, from The New York Times Magazine, March 8
Bernard Lewis Free at Last? The Arab World in the Twenty-first Century, from Foreign Affairs, March/April.
Beth Alvarado Clarity, from Cimarron Review, Winter.
Bethany Vaccaro Shock Waves, from The American Scholar, Summer.
Betty Ruddy The Shark's Jaw, from The Journal, Spring/Summer.
Billy Collins The Vehicle of Language, from Lapham's Quarterly, Summer.
Bill Capossere Black Holes, from Colorado Review, Spring.
Bonnie Friedman Becoming Visible, from Ploughshares, Fall.
Brandon Lingle A Fair Fight in a Neutral Location, from North American Review, March-April.
Breyten Breytenbach Obamandela, from Harper's, March.
Brian Bedard Aisle 22, from South Dakota Review, Summer.
Brian Jay Stanley On Being Nothing, from The Antioch Review, Spring.
Bryan Charles There's a Road to Everywhere Except Where You Came From, from Open City, No. 27 – Summer.
C
C.J. Chivers The Long Walk, from Esquire, August
Carlo Rotella The Mouse Sled, from The Washington Post Magazine, November 22
Carrie Shipers Ghost Traffic, from Zone 3, Fall
Cate Hennessey Shoveling Snow, from The Gettysburg Review, Autumn.
Charisse Coleman Riding Shotgun, from Passages North, Winter/Spring.
Charles Bowden Contested Ground, from Orion, Nov/Dec.
Cheryl Strayed Munro County, from The Missouri Review, Summer.
Chris Abani Ethics and Narrative: the Human and Other, from Witness.
Christen Enos Receptionist, from Make, Summer/Fall.
Christina Marsden Hillis Frost, from Bellevue Literary Review, Vol. 9 No. 1.
Christine Rosen The Parents Who Don't Want to be Adults, from Commentary, July/August.
Christopher Clausen John Stuart Mill's "Very Simple Principle", from The Wilson Quarterly, Spring.
Christopher Wall The Size of the Room: A Personal Reconstruction, from The Saint Ann's Review, Fall.
Christy Wise Memory Book, from Bayou, issue 51.
Claire Mcquerry Crossing the Threshold, from Creative Nonfiction, No. 36.
Colin Rafferty When I Was Famous, from Cream City Review, Fall.
D
D. Graham Burnett A Little Travel is a Dangerous Thing, from Lapham's Quarterly, Summer.
Dagoberto Gilb Father Close, Father Far, from The Threepenny Review, Summer.
Dan Beachy-Quick Of Verdant Themes: Toward One Sentence in Proust, from Puerto del Sol, Summer.
Daniel Taylor I Tell My Mother Lies, from Image, Issue 64.
Daphne Merkin A Journey Through Darkness, from The New York Times Magazine, 10 May.
Dave Madden Play Dead, from Tampa Review 37.
David Goldhill How American Health Care Killed My Father, from The Atlantic, September.
David Grann Trial by Fire, from The New Yorker, September 7.
David Hamilton Of At the Fair II, from The Iowa Review, Spring.
David Kirby Little Richard, Where Are You?, from Five Points, Vol. 13 No. 1.
David Torrey Peters Blood Libel, from Epoch, Vol. 58 Num. 2.
David Shields All the Best Stories are True, from A Public Space, Issue 9.
Deborah Thompson What's the Matter with Houdini, from The Missouri Review, Spring.
Desirae Matherly Wagering Pressure, from Lake Effect, Vol. 13 Spring.
Diane Roberts Notwriting: The Art of Procrastination, from The Oxford American No. 66.
Dinaw Mengestu Big Money, from Granta, Autumn.
Dinty W. Moore Mr. Plimpton's Revenge: A Google Maps Essay, from The Normal School, Fall.
Donna Steiner Elements of the Wind, from Fourth Genre, Fall 11.2.
E
Earl Rovit Friends Indeed, from The Sewanee Review, Winter.
Edward Hoagland A Country for Old Men, from The American Scholar, Winter.
Edward Hoagland Curtain Calls, from Harper's, March.
Elaine Showalter Saint Jane, from Granta, Autumn.
Elena Passarello Of Singing, from The Iowa Review, Spring.
Elizabeth Enslin Ama, from Crab Orchard Review, Winter/Spring.
Elizabeth Moulton Beyond Resignation, from The Sewanee Review, Winter.
Eric Trethewey Combinations, from Five Points, Vol. 12 No. 3.
Eric Wills Field of Forgotten Dreams, from Preservation, November/December.
Eufemia Fantetti Alphabet Autobiographica, from Event, 38.3.
F
Floyd Skloot Senior Speech, from Southwest Review, Vol. 94 No. 3.
Francine Prose Through a Glass Lightly, from Tin House, Vol. 10 No. 4 Summer.
Frederick Seidel About Motorcycles, from Harper's, November.
G
Gail Folkins A Palouse Horse, from Iron Horse Literary Review, Vol. 11 No. 3.
Gary Dauphin The Aloha President, from Bidoun, Spring.
Gary Fincke Potato Chips, from Tampa Review 37.
Gary Mills Up-Armored, from War, Literature & the Arts.
Garry Wallace Our Vietnam, from Owen Wister Review.
Geeta Kothari Flight, from Fourth Genre, Spring 11.1.
Geoffrey Bent Making the Familiar Strange, from Boulevard, Spring.
Gerald Early The Humanities and Social Change, from Daedalus, Winter.
Gertrude Himmelfarb Reflections on Burke's "Reflections", from The New Criterion, February.
H
Heather Frese Fatigue, from Michigan Quarterly Review, Summer.
Heather Sellers My Pornography, from Prairie Schooner, Winter.
Helen Barolini The Curio Cabinet, from Southwest Review, Vol. 94 No. 4.
Henry Ronan-Daniell Regicide, from Sonora Review, No. 55.
Herbert Gold Marriage (A Ramble Through the Brambles), from Michigan Quarterly Review, Winter.
Hilary Masters In the Cards, from Prairie Schooner, Spring.
I
Ian Kershaw What Would I Have Done?, from In Character, Winter.
Ira Sukrungruang Our Next Lives, from The Briar Cliff Review, Volume 21.
Ira Wood You Are What You Owe, from Fifth Wednesday, Issue 5 Fall.
Iraj Isaac Rahmim How I Came to be An American—A Memoir, Fugue, from Summer/Fall.
J
J. Malcolm Garcia A Simple Explanation, from Ascent, Spring.
Jack DeWitt Cars and Culture, from The American Poetry Review, May/June.
Jack Heinz Sugar, from The Hudson Review, Summer.
Jamaica Kincaid Lack, from Part Two, Harper's, June.
James Bogan Hammock Variations, from New Letters, Vol. 75 Nos. 2 & 3.
James Nolan The Diamond Question Mark, from Boulevard, Spring.
James Wolcott What's a Culture Snob to Do? , from Vanity Fair, August.
Jane Miller The Hospital Years, from Raritan, Fall.
Janna Malamud Smith Learning "Fish", from The Threepenny Review, Spring.
Jay Ponteri Listen to this, from Salamander, Vol. 15 No. 1.
Jeffrey Hammond My Father's Hats, from Shenandoah, Fall.
Jeffrey Meyers The Wind in the Willows: A New Source for Animal Farm, from Salmagundi, Spring/Summer.
Jen Hirt Arrived to Find, from Natural Bridge, No. 20 Spring.
Jerald Walker My Fear of the South, from The Oxford American, No. 68.
Jerry D. Mathes II Hand-me-down War Stories, from The Southern Review, Winter.
Jesse Walker The Politics of Superheroes, from Reason, May.
Jo Scott-Coe Recovering Teacher, from Memoir (and), Spring/Summer.
Joan Frank In Search of Heated Agreement, from The Antioch Review, Spring.
Jocelyn Bartkevicius Crossroads from Fourth Genre, Spring 11.1.
Joe Bonomo The God-Blurred World, from New Ohio Review, Spring.
Joe Mackall A Question of Laziness, from Chautauqua, Issue 6.
Joe Queenan The "My Bad" Syndrome, from In Character, Winter.
Joelle Fraser Inspiration Point, from Crazyhorse, Spring.
John Mcphee Checkpoints, from The New Yorker, February 9/16.
Jonathan V. Last, The More, The Wiser?, from In Character, Fall.
Joseph Epstein Toddlin' Town, from Commentary, November.
Josie Milliken Safe as Houses, from Mid-American Review, Vol. XXIX No. 2.
Josip Novakovich Cat Named Sobaka, from Gargoyle 54.
Joy Castro Grip, from Fourth Genre, Fall 11:2.
Joy Ladin The Velveteen Woman, from Parnassus, Vol. 31 No. 1 & 2.
Judith Gleason Waterspirit-Carrying Woman, from Cultural Studies <--> Critical Methodologies, Feb.
Judith Kitchen True Heart, from The Georgia Review, Summer.
Jullian Barnes Such, Such Was Eric Blair, from The New York Review of Books, March 12.
Julianna Baggot For All the Ladies in My Mother's Book Group, from Hayden's Ferry Review, Spring/Summer.
K
Karen Hering Counting Our Losses, from Amoskeag, Spring.
Karol Nielsen The New Zealand Sheep Farmer and the Recruit, from Lumina, Vol. VIII.
Kat Meads Counterproductive Bedtime Stories (The Short List), from Chautauqua, Issue 6.
Kathleen Rooney Self-Portrait at 27, from Sycamore, Winter/Spring.
Kathryn Rhett In Transit, from Harvard Review, No. 36.
Kaylie Jones City of Lights, from Ep;phany, Winter/Spring.
Kenneth King Mirror of the Mind: Internet, from Cyberocularity and Digital Otherness, Hotel Amerika, Fall.
Kevin Oderman Colors, from Green Mountains Review, Vol. XXII No. 1.
Kim Adrian How to Buy Peaches, from Tin House, Vol. 10 No. 3 Spring.
Kim Coleman Foote Stranger in Elmina, from The Literary Review, Winter.
Kim Dana Kupperman The Roar on the Other Side of Silence, from Hotel Amerika, Fall.
Kimberly L. Rogers Know When to Walk Away: Returning to Zimbabwe by Greyhound, from Flyaway, Vol. 12.2.
Kirsten Eve Beachy Selling the Farm, from Shenandoah, Spring/Summer.
L
L.B. Thompson Torpor, from Prairie Schooner, Spring.
Laura Brown-Lavoie Bricklaying, from Seneca Review, Spring.
Laura Esther Wolfson Proust at Rush Hour, from The Sun, March.
Laura Kipnis School for Scandal, from Harper's, March.
Laura Pritchett Wildfire Stars, from High Desert Journal, Fall.
Lauren Slater Fixed, from Gulf Coast, Winter/Spring.
Lee Zacharias The Bride Beneath My Bed, from Pleiades, Vol. 29.1.
Leila Dena Seven Days in Tehran, from GQ, September.
Leon Wieseltier My Secret Life, from The New Republic, June 3.
Leslie Hsu Oh Between the Lines, from Under the Sun, Summer.
Lia Purpura On Coming Back as a Buzzard, from Orion Sept/Oct.
Lili Wright Pilgrim, from Southern Indiana Review, Vol. 16 No. 1.
Lina Mounzer Somewhere Over the Rainbow, from Bidoun, Winter.
Lisa Knopp No Other River, from The Iowa Review, Fall.
Louis Menand Show or Tell, from The New Yorker, June 8/15.
Luc Sante Folk Photography The American Real-Photo Postcard, from Aperture, Fall.
Lucille Lang Day Time-Out!, from Passages North, Winter/Spring.
Lucy Ferriss Writing the Body, from The Southern Review, Summer.
Lynda Sexson The Duct-taped Side of the Moon, from The Kenyon Review, Spring.
Lynne Sharon Schwartz Harmony, from Northwest Review, Vol. 47.2.
M
M.G. Stephens Francis Bacon's Studio, from The Missouri Review, Winter.
Malcolm Gladwell The Courthouse Ring, from The New Yorker, August 10/17
Marcia Aldrich The Dead Dog Essay, from The Florida Review, Summer Vol. 34.1.
Margot Livesey Shakespeare for Writers, from Sixteen Lessons, The Cincinnati Review, 5.2 Winter.
Mark Edmundson Enough Already, from The American Scholar, Summer.
Mark Greif On Repressive Sentimentalism, from N +1, Fall.
Mark Slouka Dehumanized, from Harper's, September.
Mary B. Valencia Blue, from Prism International, Fall.
Mary Beard Scrolling Down the Ages, from The New York Times Book Review, April 19.
Mary Cappallo Getting the News: A Signer Among Signs, from The Georgia Review, Summer.
Mary Gaitskill Lost Cat, from Granta, Summer.
Maxine Kumin Swift to Its Close, from Shenandoah, Spring/Summer.
Maud Casey A Life in Books, from The Oxford American, No. 66.
Melissa Haley A Walking Tour of Blissville, from Raritan, Winter.
Mel Livatino In Search of a Golden Bird Upon a Bough of Memory, from The Sewanee Review, Spring.
Michael Coffey Free Jazz, from New England Review, Vol. 30 Num. 2.
Michael S. Gazzaniga Humans: the party animal, from Daedalus, Summer.
Michael Martone Four Fourths, from Hunger Mountain.
Michael Milburn Death Wish, from Real, Fall.
Michelle Cacho-Negrete Stones, from The Sun, April.
Mike Freeman Compression, from South Loop Review, Vol. 11.
Mike Rose Blue-Collar Brilliance, from The American Scholar, Summer.
Mimi Schwartz When History Gets Persona, from Agni 70.
N
Nancy J. Nordenson Ontology, from Harpur Palate, Volume 9, Issue 1
Nancy Lord About a Moment, from Alaska Quarterly Review, Spring/Summer.
Nancy Mccabe Still Dancing, from Gulf Coast, Summer/Fall.
Naomi Kimbell Whistling in the Dark, from Black Warrior Review, Spring/Summer.
Naomi Klein No Logo at 10, from The Baffler, Vol. 2 No. 1.
Neil Mathison Volcano: An A to Z, from Southern Humanities Review, Fall.
Nicholas D. Kristof How to Save the World & Influence People, from Outside, Dec.
O
Oleg Grabar Seeing and Believing, from The New Republic , November 4.
P
P. Philip Cheung My Father's Hands, from Bellevue Literary Review, Vol. 9 No. 2.
Patricia Brieschke All of Me, from The Sun, March.
Patricia Foster Sick of Smart, from The Florida Review, Summer Vol. 34.1
Patricia Hohl Pasture, from Fourth Genre, Spring 11.1.
Patricia Vigderman By the Pond, from Harvard Review, No. 37.
Patrick Madden Where Am I Now?, from Waterstone Review.
Paul Beckman Another One of His Punishments, from New Haven Review, Summer.
Paul Bogard The Path and Pull of the Moon, from Creative Nonfiction, No. 36.
Paul Theroux The Long Way Home, from Smithsonian, September.
Paul West Fat and Scant of Breath, from Harper's, July.
Paul Zimmer Four Cats and the Pathetic Fallacy, from The Georgia Review, Fall.
Peter Lasalle Walking: An Essay on Writing, from Agni, 70.
Phillip Connors So Little to Remember, from N + 1.
Philip Gerard Three Portraits of Grace , from The Louisville Review, Spring.
Philip Levine A History of My Befuddlement, from Five Points, Vol. 13 No. 1.
Phyllis Barber Sweetgrass , from Upstreet, Vol. 5.
Pico Iyer Nowhere Need Be Foreign, from Lapham's Quarterly, Summer.
Poe Ballantine The Fine Art of Quitting , from The Sun, April.
Priscilla Long Memento Metro, from Alaska Quarterly Review, Fall/Winter.
Q
R
R. Radhakrishnan Why Compare?, , from New Literary History, Summer.
Randall Patterson The Thin Blue Lie, from The Texas Observer, Mar 20.
Rebecca Mcclanahan The Tribal Knot: Ties that Bind and Break Us, from The Kenyon Review, Winter.
Renee E. D'aoust Holy Feet, from Notre Dame Review, Summer/Fall.
Richard Goodman The Ceiling Leak, from Ascent, Winter.
Richard Rodriguez Final Edition, from Harper's, November.
Rick Bass The Rains in September, from TriQuarterly, 133.
Riley Hanick The Pradelles, from Sonora Review, No. 56.
Ryan Van Meter Things I Will Want to Tell You on Our First Date but Won't, from Gulf Coast, Summer/Fall.
Rene Goerg Vasicek Get a Grip, from Minnetonka Review, Winter.
Robert Darnton Google & the Future of Books, from The New York Review of Books, February 12.
Robert F. Nagel The Incivility Epidemic, from The Weekly Standard, December 7.
Robert Mcclure Smith The Spit: A Memoir of '77, from South Loop Review, Vol. 11.
Robert Messenger The Cocktail Renaissance, from The Weekly Standard, August 3.
Robert Rebein The Greatest Game Country on Earth, from Grasslands Review.
Robert Root Postscript to a Postscript to "The Ring of Time," from The Pinch, Spring.
Robert Vivian Town, from Ecotone, No. 8.
Robyn Anspach Three Hooks, from New Letters, Vol. 75 Nos. 2 & 3.
S
S. L. Wisenberg My Post-Mastectomy Dilemma, from Progressive, November.
Sallie Tisdale Speaking in Tongues, from Portland, Spring.
Samuel Pickering Puffing, from Southwest Review, Vol. 94 No. 4.
Sandra Cisneros An Ofrenda for My Mother, from Granta, Autumn.
Sara Crosby The Black and White, from Fourth Genre, Fall 11.2.
Sarah Einstein Mot, from Ninth Letter, Fall/Winter.
Sarah Fang The Missing Pictures, from Colorado Review, Fall/Winter.
Sarah Song What Does It Mean to be an American? , from Daedalus, Spring.
Scott Russell Sanders Mind in the Forest, from Orion, Nov/Dec.
Sheila Kohler Grief, from Salmagundi, Spring/Summer.
Shifra Sharlin Better Practices in Mourning, from Southwest Review, Vol. 94 No. 3.
Shozan Jack Haubner Son of a Gun, from Tricycle, Spring.
Shura Young Tar Pits, from Flyaway, Vol. 12.2.
Siobhan Phillips What We Talk about When We Talk about Food, from The Hudson Review, Summer.
Stephen Clark My Year of European Underwear, from Ninth Letter, Fall/Winter.
Steve Featherstone Shooting Afghans, from The Southern Review, Summer.
Stuart Dybek Waiting, from Zoetrope: All-Story, Winter.
Susan Fox Rogers If You Are Lucky, from If You Are Lucky.
Susan Orlean The It Bird, from The New Yorker, September 28.
Susannah B. Mintz The Dirty Little Secret of Sabbatical, from Michigan Quarterly Review, Spring.
Suzanne Wolfe This Is My Body, from Image, Issue 64.
Sue Eisenfeld Urban Refuge, from Potomac Review, Spring.
T
Ted Conover Slipping from Shangri-la, from Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring.
Ted Sanders To Scale, from The Cincinnati Review, 5.2 Winter.
Thomas Mallon Across the Universe, from The Atlantic, May.
Timothy Snyder Holocaust: The Ignored Reality, from The New York Review of Books, July 16.
Tom Bisell Why I Cannot Write About the Camino de Santiago, from McSweeney's, No. 33.
Tom Fleischmann On Alticorns, from Indiana Review, Winter.
Tom Lane Depression, from Literary Style, Think, Summer.
U
V
W
W. Scott Olsen The Long Cross-Country, from Northwest Review, Vol. 47.3.
Wallace Shawn Is Sex Interesting?, from Harper's, August.
Walter B. Levis Eulogy for a Generous Man, from Jabberwock Review, Winter.
William Giraldi Freaky Beasts: Revelations of a One-Time Bodybuilder , from The Kenyon Review, Fall.
William Kittredge Going to the Coast, from TriQuarterly, 133.
William Langewiesche Anatomy of a Miracle, from Vanity Fair, June.
WinonaWinkler Wendth Strapless, from Third Coast, Fall.
X
Y
Yelizaveta P. Renfro Cause of Death, from South Dakota Review, Fall.
Yusef Komunyakaa The Colors in My Dreams, from The Washington Post Magazine, Jan 18.
Z
Zeynep Devrim Gursel The Taste of Mice, from Michigan Quarterly Review, Fall.
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