Joyce Carol Oates

Robert Atwan

An anthology of fifty-five essays on a variety of topics features contributions by F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Baldwin, Stephen Jay Gould, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, and other notable twentieth-century literary masters.

The Best American Essays of the Century

Rebecca Solnit

A collection of the year's best essays selected by Robert Atwan and guest editor Rebecca Solnit. Award-winning writer, cultural critic, and activist, Rebecca Solnit, an "unparalleled high priestess of nuance and intelligent contemplation" (Maria Popova), selects the best essays of the year from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites.

The Best American Essays 2019

Andr Aciman

André Aciman

Compiles the best literary essays of the year 2019 which were originally published in American periodicals.

The Best American Essays 2020

Mary Oliver

Compiles the best literary essays of the year originally published in American periodicals

The Best American Essays 2009

Jonathan Franzen

The award-winning and best-selling Jonathan Franzen picks the best essays from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites.

The Best American Essays 2016

Leslie Jamison

"Jamison has done an exceptional job curating this volume, selecting essayists who are diverse in ideas and experiences, and 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. From the Iraqi desert to an East Jerusalem refugee camp, from the beginnings of the universeto the aftermath of a suicide attempt, the genetic makeup of the eclectic and electric selections inThe Best American Essays 2017 "thrill toward complexity." The Best American Essays 2017 includes RACHEL KAADZI GHANSAH, LAWRENCE JACKSON, RACHEL KUSHNER, ALAN LIGHTMAN, BERNARD FARAI MATAMBO, WESLEY MORRIS, HEATHER SELLERS, ANDREA STUART and others

The Best American Essays 2017

Cheryl Strayed

Compiles the best literary essays of the year 2012 originally published in American periodicals, including works by Alice Munro, David Searcy, Angela Morales, and Walter Kirn.

The Best American Essays 2013

Ariel Levy

"New Yorker "magazine staff writer and award-winning essayist Ariel Levy picks the year s best essays, selected from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. "

The Best American Essays 2015

David Foster Wallace

The Best American Essays 2007

David Brooks

Compiles the best literary essays of the year 2011 which were originally published in American periodicals.

The Best American Essays 2012

John Jeremiah Sullivan

Offers a selection of literary essays from the year 2014 which were originally published in American periodicals.

The Best American Essays 2014

Compiles a selection of the best literary essays of the year 1990 which were originally published in American periodicals.

The Best American Essays 1991

Vivian Gornick

In her introduction to this year’s The Best American Essays, guest editor Vivian Gornick states that her selections “contribute materially to the long and honorable history of the personal essay by way of the value they place on lived experience.” Provocative, daring, and honest at a time when many writers are deliberately silencing themselves in the face of authoritarian and populist censorship movements, the twenty-one essays collected here reflect their authors’ unapologetic observations of the world around them. From an inmate struggling to find purpose during his prison sentence to a doctor coping with the unpredictable nature of her patient, to a widow wishing for just a little more time with her late husband, these narratives—and the others featured in this anthology—celebrate the endurance of the human spirit.

The Best American Essays 2023 includes Ciara Alfaro • Jillian Barnet • Sylvie Baumgartel • Eric Borsuk • Chris Dennis • Xujun Eberlein • Sandra Hager Eliason • George Estreich • Merrill Joan Gerber • Debra Gwartney • Edward Hoagland • Laura Kipnis • Phillip Lopate • Celeste Marcus • Sam Meekings • Sigrid Nunez • Kathryn Schulz • Anthony Siegel • Scott Spencer • Angelique Stevens • David Treuer

The Best American Essays 2023

Presents an anthology of the best literary essays published in 2014, selected from American periodicals.

The Best American Essays

Alexander Chee

A collection of the year’s best essays, selected by award-winning writer Alexander Chee. Alexander Chee, an essayist of “virtuosity and power” (Washington Post), selects twenty essays out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.

The Best American Essays 2022

Best American Essays 2012

Published: Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., -

America Now makes it easy for you to bring brief, thought-provoking essays on contemporary topics into your classroom, with reliable pedagogy and an expert reader's knowledge of what works for students. As series editor for The Best American Essays, Robert Atwan constantly scours a wide range of publications, bringing to America Now an unrivaled focus on today’s best writing. Instructors tell us that their students want to respond to the essays in the book, and they praise the high-quality reading and writing instruction, critical thinking and reading questions, and model student essays that help them do so. Over half of the readings in America Now are new to this edition and published since 2018, making it truly a book for today's composition course.

Short Essays on Current Issues

America Now

America Now has always been characterized by its brief and very current readings that reflect what students are talking and writing about right now. As series editor for The Best American Essays, Robert Atwan constantly scours a wide range of print and online periodicals, bringing to America Now an unrivaled awareness of the best writing on today's issues — and the top-notch editorial support students need to approach it and to create solid academic writing of their own. The print text is now integrated with e-Pages for America Now, designed to take advantage of what the Web can do, with carefully curated, multimodal selections. When you use America Now in your course, the essential texts of today are both the words on a page and the world on a screen.

Short Readings from Recent Periodicals

Donald McQuade

Presents a rhetorically-arranged reader that shows students how underlying rhetorical structures stimulate and direct clear thinking and effective writing. This work also reflects the contemporary and practical work done on the interconnectedness of composition and cognition.

Robert Atwan

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