4.0
The Best American Essays 2012
ByPublisher Description
Whether a personal reflection on a wife's decline from Alzheimer's, a critique of the overdiagnosis of mood disorders, a lighthearted look at menopause, a friend's commentary on David Foster Wallace's heartbreaking suicide, or a memoir of teaching underprivileged children, this collection highlights the best essays of the year with contributions from:
Benjamin Anastas • Marcia Angell • Miah Arnold • Geoffrey Bent • Robert Boyers • Dudley Clendinen • Paul Collins • Mark Doty • Mark Edmundson • Joseph Epstein • Jonathan Franzen • Malcolm Gladwell • Peter Hessler • Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough • Garret Keizer • David J. Lawless • Alan Lightman • Sandra Tsing Loh • Ken Murray • Francine Prose • Richard Sennett • Lauren Slater • Jose Antonio Vargas • Wesley Yang
"A trove of fine writing on big issues." —
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe Best American Essays 2012 Reviews
4.0
“This is the 4th time reading a Best American Essays collection. I first met this series about 10 years ago when one edition was required reading for a class in college. This edition seemed to have more of a highbrow or pretentious selection than I remembered getting from the other editions that I've read, which were more artistic and down-to-earth.
My favorite in this edition was Vanishing Act by Paul Collins, a historical essay telling the story of forgotten American author Barbara Follett, who became nationally famous in the 1920's when she published a very successful novel at the age of 12. Maybe she would have sealed her place in America's literary memory had she not gone missing at age 25. No one knows what happened to her. This gem was worth all the other essays in the collection put together.
The runner up was Farther Away by Jonathan Frazen, probably the longest piece in the collection. It covers multiple topics, but it's most compelling aspect, to me, was the travel writing about the author's trip to a remote island off the coast of Chile, where he hoped to see and photograph a rare bird that inhabits the island.
Honorable mention to My Father / My Husband, which was very sweet. It was a love letter of sorts to the author's late wife who suffered severely from dementia the last few years of her life.”
About David Brooks
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.
Other books by David Brooks
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