"Although Arthur Krystal shies away from the title of essayist, his essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s, the American Scholar, the New York Times Book Review, and other publications. Moreover, such dissimilar critics as Dana Gioia, Morris Dickstein, Edward Mendelson, Christopher Hitchens, and Joseph Epstein have all lauded his work. And his first book, Agitations: Essays on Life and Literature, was a finalist for the 2003 PEN Award...

"Daniel Mallory Ortberg is known for blending genres, forms, and sources to develop fascinating new hybrids--from lyric rants to horror recipes to pornographic scripture. In his most personal work to date, he turns his attention to the essay, offering vigorous and laugh-out-loud funny accounts of both popular and highbrow culture while mixing in meditations on gender transition, family dynamics, and the many meanings of faith. From a thoughtful analysis...

"Throughout a unparalleled literary career that includes two National Book Awards (Goodbye, Columbus, 1959 and Sabbath's Theater, 1995), the Pulitzer Prize in fiction (American Pastoral, 1997), the National Book Critics Circle Award (The Counterlife, 1986), and the National Humanities Medal (awarded by President Obama in 2011), among many other honors, Philip Roth has produced an extraordinary body of nonfiction writing on a wide range of topics:...

The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. Each volume's series editor selects notable works from hundreds of periodicals. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected, and most popular, of its kind.

Presents a collection of the year's best essays as selected by best-selling author Alexander Chee.

"The three decades that followed World War II were an exceptionally fertile period for American essays. The explosion of journals and magazines, the rise of public intellectuals, and breakthroughs in the arts inspired a flowering of literary culture. At the same time, the many problems that confronted mid-century America--racism, sexism, nuclear threat, war, poverty, and environmental degradation among them--proved fruitful topics for America's best...

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

"As personal and idiosyncratic as the best mixtape, this book showcases the author's deep thinking and broad-ranging interests, his sly wit, his soft spot of heavy metal, and his ability to tunnel deeply into the odd and revealing, sometimes subterranean, worlds of American life."--