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In the magazine world, no recognition is more highly coveted than an "Ellie," presentedby the American Society of Magazine Editors. Selected from thousands of submissions, the pieces in this anthology represent the very best of those -- outstanding works by some of the most eminent writers in America: Laura Hillenbrand (Seabiscuit) on living and creating with chronic fatigue syndrome Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) on love and surfing Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down) on modern torture and the "landscape of persuasion" Seymour M. Hersh (Chain of Command) on the "selective intelligence" used by the White House to justify the war in Iraq Calvin Trillin (The Tummy Trilogy) on his favorite force of nature, the newsman R. W. Apple, Jr. Tucker Carlson (CNN's Crossfire), the "whitest man in America," on a peace mission with Rev. Al Sharpton And many more!… (more)
Well, it ain't the Best American series, which any fool can detect from the cover. But it's not a facsimile either. This book has Susan Orlean's name on the cover, but she didn't do the selections; she just wrote an intro.
The selections are made by ASME. I don't know how the winners from many categories were chosen to be published because I didn't bother to look. It's not a bad book. It just makes you realize that having a different distinguished writer like Susan Orlean picking her favorites each year would have produced more variety.
What we've got is a lot of stuff from The Atlantic and The New Yorker. I don't subscribe to either but I had read most of the pieces. Maybe I ended up reading Seymour Hersh's book that included this piece (on the Bush Administration in the run-up to Iraq). There's a lot on Iraq here that makes the book feel dated.
I had even read Dave Eggers short story--flawed but still fine and from a woman's point of view yet. Since it appeared originally in Zoetrope, I must have read it in the Best American Short Stories annual anthology.
William Langewiesche--on a shuttle disaster-- I had missed and it's always absorbing to see how he can make a complex topic and processes so crystal clear. Best thing, though, was Katherine Boo's story for The New Yorker on two struggling single black women in Oklahoma. One old, one young. The young one is almost making it, with no kids, but on the verge of making irreversible mistakes.
How hard it is to get that cruddy minimum wage job and then, with transportation difficulties, how hard to hold on to it. The older woman, divorced, has somehow raised her kids up right. The youngest, a boy, is in high school, an athlete and smart enough to get into a college. But there isn't much financial aid, guidance counseling seems non-existent. If only they could establish their Native American bona fides--that's when the student financial aid really flows. So mama goes by bus back to her Southern roots to try to dig up an ancestor ... Boo must have written a book from this. I hope so. ( )
In the magazine world, no recognition is more highly coveted than an "Ellie," presentedby the American Society of Magazine Editors. Selected from thousands of submissions, the pieces in this anthology represent the very best of those -- outstanding works by some of the most eminent writers in America: Laura Hillenbrand (Seabiscuit) on living and creating with chronic fatigue syndrome Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) on love and surfing Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down) on modern torture and the "landscape of persuasion" Seymour M. Hersh (Chain of Command) on the "selective intelligence" used by the White House to justify the war in Iraq Calvin Trillin (The Tummy Trilogy) on his favorite force of nature, the newsman R. W. Apple, Jr. Tucker Carlson (CNN's Crossfire), the "whitest man in America," on a peace mission with Rev. Al Sharpton And many more!
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The selections are made by ASME. I don't know how the winners from many categories were chosen to be published because I didn't bother to look. It's not a bad book. It just makes you realize that having a different distinguished writer like Susan Orlean picking her favorites each year would have produced more variety.
What we've got is a lot of stuff from The Atlantic and The New Yorker. I don't subscribe to either but I had read most of the pieces. Maybe I ended up reading Seymour Hersh's book that included this piece (on the Bush Administration in the run-up to Iraq). There's a lot on Iraq here that makes the book feel dated.
I had even read Dave Eggers short story--flawed but still fine and from a woman's point of view yet. Since it appeared originally in Zoetrope, I must have read it in the Best American Short Stories annual anthology.
William Langewiesche--on a shuttle disaster-- I had missed and it's always absorbing to see how he can make a complex topic and processes so crystal clear. Best thing, though, was Katherine Boo's story for The New Yorker on two struggling single black women in Oklahoma. One old, one young. The young one is almost making it, with no kids, but on the verge of making irreversible mistakes.
How hard it is to get that cruddy minimum wage job and then, with transportation difficulties, how hard to hold on to it. The older woman, divorced, has somehow raised her kids up right. The youngest, a boy, is in high school, an athlete and smart enough to get into a college. But there isn't much financial aid, guidance counseling seems non-existent. If only they could establish their Native American bona fides--that's when the student financial aid really flows. So mama goes by bus back to her Southern roots to try to dig up an ancestor ... Boo must have written a book from this. I hope so. (