Edited by The New Yorker's much-loved Adam Gopnik, this year's Best American Essays includes contributions by such writers as Albert Goldbarth, Anthony Lane, Louis Menand, and Ander Monson.

In this captivating double life, Adam Gopnik searches for the men behind the icons of emancipation and evolution. Born by cosmic coincidence on the same day in 1809 and separated by an ocean, Lincoln and Darwin coauthored our sense of history and our understanding of man's place in the world. Here Gopnik reveals these two men as they really were: family men and social climbers, ambitious manipulators and courageous adventurers, grieving parents and brilliant scholars. Above all we see them as thinkers and writers, making and witnessing the great changes in thought that mark truly modern...

An impassioned defense of the freedom of speech, from Stephane Charbonnier, a journalist murdered for his convictions
On January 7, 2015, two gunmen stormed the offices of the French satirical newspaper "Charlie Hebdo." They took the lives of twelve men and women, but they called for one man by name: "Charb."
Known by his pen name, Stephane Charbonnier was editor in chief of "Charlie Hebdo, " an outspoken critic of religious fundamentalism, and a renowned political cartoonist in his own right. In the past, he had received death threats and had even earned a place on Al Qaeda's "Most...