Best American Series

Some truly excellent writing: my particular favorites included Mark Leibovich's profile of Mike Allen, Michael Paterniti's "The Suicide Catcher," and Pamela Colloff's two pieces on a man imprisoned in Texas for years for a crime he didn't commit. Paul Theroux's story "Minor Watt" is creepy-good, too.

What I liked about this book was the great range of topics and writing styles; it was fun to just dip into this volume when I needed a breather from whatever else I was reading at the time and show more know that I'd find something interesting. show less

As usual with such collections, a decent selection of fascinating and varied pieces from across the spectrum. Also as usual, I enjoyed some more than others. There seemed to be a reasonably high ratio of essays and articles about Afghanistan and Iraq, which surprised me a bit but perhaps shouldn't have done. On the whole, though, entirely worth dipping into for some excellent recent writing.

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 show more 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. show less

The Best American Magazine Writing 2007

A collection of 18 of the best articles from American magazines published in 2006. Almost uniformly impressive, barring a strange critique of an E.B. White essay about geese by Paul Theroux, this collection promises to deliver top quality writing in a variety of fields and it delivers. Thought provoking, moving, funny and anger inducing. The biggest flaw I found was that I read it so quickly I did not give each piece the time for thought that it show more deserved. I would also add that some of the pieces missed out on having no photographs present. Immedietly back on the re-read pile. Barry Silver Star.

Here are two of the articles I found most impressive.

http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ0906NEWORLEANS_216

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/08/hitchens200608 show less