"Engaging and thoughtful . . . occasionally transcendent." — Publishers Weekly
"What captivated me? A memorable voice . . . shapeliness . . . restraint . . . attention to detail . . . the determination to explore one thing deeply . . . vitality." — Anne Fadiman, from her introduction
Selected by the award-winning editor of the American Scholar, Anne Fadiman, The Best American Essays® 2003 showcases the finest nonfiction writing published in the past year, from The New Yorker to the Georgia Review, from DoubleTake to Harper's Magazine.
Included in this eighteenth edition of the best-selling anthology:
• Adam Gopnik on his daughter's imaginary friend, who's too busy to play with her (only in New York)
• Joseph Epstein on finding a "snob-free zone"
• John Edgar Wideman and Elaine Scarry on September 11
• Francine du Plessix Gray on fleeing Paris in 1940
• Atul Gawande on learning to be a surgeon
• Ian Frazier in a laugh-out-loud piece on how "life is too hard"
• Caitlin Flanagan on Martha Stewart
Additional literary lights whose work appears in this year's collection: André Aciman, Susan Sontag, Judith Thurman, and Edward Hoagland, among others. The topics are diverse, and the writing all displays "an awareness of craft and forcefulness of thought," according to the series editor, Robert Atwan.
Anne Fadiman is the editor of the American Scholar and the author of two books of nonfiction, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award) and Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader. Fadiman lives with her husband and two children in western Massachusetts.
Robert Atwan has been the series editor of The Best American Essays® since its inception in 1986. He has edited numerous literary anthologies and written essays and reviews for periodicals nationwide.
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