Book Details
The ever-entertaining Dave Eggers and his students at the 826 Valencia and 826Michigan writing labs compile a quirky collection and showcase their flair for finding both offbeat tidbits and classic literary gems.
Contents
Editor’s Note from Dave Eggers
Introduction by Ray Bradbury
Best American Sonnet with Vengeance
from Zone 3, Sherman Alexie
Best American Very Short Memoir
from The New Yorker, Junot Díaz
Best American Manifesto
from The Occupied Wall Street Journal
Best American Minutes from the General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street
from www.nycga.net
Best American Observations at a Modern Protest Movement
from McSweeney’s, Saïd Sayrafi ezadeh
Best American Reflection on Historic Protest Movements
from The Occupied Wall Street Journal, Adam Hochschild
Best American Reflection on a Modern Protest Movement
from The New York Times, Robert Hass
Best American Letters in the Mail
from The Rumpus, Stephen Elliott, Rick Moody, Padma Viswanathan, Claire Bidwell Smith
Best American Palindrome
from The Believer, Barry Duncan
Best American Tweets Responding to the Death of Osama bin Laden
from www.twitter.com
Best American Lonely Guy
from Jeff, One Lonely Guy, Jeff Ragsdale, David Shields, Michael Logan
Kevin Brockmeier. A Fable For the Living
from Electric Literature
Judy Budnitz. Tin Man
from This American Life
Louise Erdrich. The Years of My Birth
from The New Yorker
Olivia Hamilton. An Oral History of Olivia Hamilton
from Inside This Place, Not of It: Narratives from Women’s Prisons
Phil Klay. Redeployment
from Granta
Nora Krug. Kamikaze
from A Public Space
Anthony Marra. The Palace of the People
from Narrative Magazine
Julie Otsuka. The Children
from Granta
Michael Poore. The street of the House of the Sun
from The Pinch
Eric Puchner. Beautiful Monsters
from Tin House
Mark Robert Rapacz. Bellwether
from Water~Stone Review
Chaz Reetz-Laiolo. The Love Act
from Raritan
Jon Ronson. The Amazing Adventures of Phoenix Jones
from GQ
Ryan Rivas. South Beach
from Annalemma
George Saunders. The Tenth of December
from The New Yorker
Mona Simpson. Transcription of a Eulogy
John Jeremiah Sullivan. Peyton’s Place
from GQ
Adrian Tomine. A Brief History of the Art Form Known as “Hortisculpture”
from Optic Nerve
Jose Antonio Vargas. Outlaw
from The New York Times Magazine
Jess Walter. Don’t Eat Cat
from Byliner
Wesley Yang. Paper Tigers
from New York Magazine
Contributors’ Notes
The Best American Nonrequired Reading Committee
Notable Nonrequired Reading of 2011
About 826 National
Other distinguished nonrequired reading, selected by series editor Dave Eggers and the 826 Kids.
