This year's selection includes William Langewiesche's probing investigation in Vanity Fair of the slaughter of twenty-four Iraqis in Haditha; C. J. Chivers's chilling account in Esquire of the 2004 hostage crisis in Beslan, which killed 331 people, 186 of them children; Susan Casey's revelation in Best Life of a virtually unknown, Texas-sized garbage dump resting at the bottom of the Pacific ocean; and Andrew Corsello's harrowing portrait in GQ of Robert Mugabe's mad rule and two men-a white farmer and a fiery black priest-who strive for forgiveness instead of...

Liang Shih-chiu (1903-1987), a literary critic and theorist of many talents, was the first person to translate the complete works of Shakespeare into Chinese. Literary historians remember him chiefly for his conservative leanings and his infamous "war of words" with Lu Xun, the acknowledged leader of leftist writers in the 1930s. The essays in this collection consider a variety of topics, tempering social satire of postwar China with light humor, while highlighting Liang's versatile literary style. At a time when the common cry was "to write as one would speak," and a battle line was drawn...

The Best American Magazine Writing 2008 is an essential guide to the year's most entertaining, politically charged, and sophisticated essays. With pieces first published in The Nation, National Geographic, Vanity Fair, and the New Yorker, among other leading publications, this anthology illuminates the most compelling issues of the past year and points to the topics that will concern us in the next. Chosen from among the winners and finalists of the 2008 National Magazine Awards, these articles span an eclectic range, from a chilling account of the CIA's...

More and more readers turn to The Best American Magazine Writing for their annual fix of the year's most captivating essays, columns, reporting, and criticism. Chosen from the winners and finalists of the 2009 National Magazine Awards, this year's selections include the haunting story by Chris Jones (Esquire) of an American soldier's final journey home; James Wood's brilliant critique of the award-winning novelist Marianne Robinson (The New Yorker); a compelling column by Naomi Klein (The Nation) on the return of class consciousness in America; two biting reviews...

Our annual anthology of finalists and winners of the National Magazine Awards 2014 includes Max Chafkin's oral history of Apple from Fast Company, Joshua Davis's intimate portrait of tech pioneer John McAfee's personal and public breakdown from Wired; Kyle Dickman's haunting investigation into the preventable death of nineteen firemen battling an Arizona wildfire; and Ariel Levy's emotional account of extreme travel to a remote land--while pregnant--from The New Yorker.

Other essays include Wright Thompson's bittersweet profile of Michael Jordan's fifty-something...

This year's Best American Magazine Writing features articles on politics, culture, sports, sex, race, celebrity, and more. Selections include Ta-Nehisi Coates's intensely debated "The Case For Reparations" (The Atlantic) and Monica Lewinsky's reflections on the public-humiliation complex and how the rules of the game have (and have not) changed (Vanity Fair). Amanda Hess recounts her chilling encounter with Internet sexual harassment (Pacific Standard) and John Jeremiah Sullivan shares his investigation into one of American music's greatest mysteries (New York Times...

This year's Best American Magazine Writing features outstanding writing on contentious issues including incarceration, policing, sexual assault, labor, technology, and environmental catastrophe. Selections include Paul Ford's ambitious "What Is Code?" (Bloomberg Businessweek), an innovative explanation of how programming works, and "The Really Big One," by Kathryn Schulz (The New Yorker), which exposes just how unprepared the Pacific Northwest is for a major earthquake. Joining them are Meaghan Winter's expose of crisis pregnancy centers (Cosmopolitan) and a...

With the work of journalists under fire around the world, this year's anthology of National Magazine Awards finalists and winners is a timely reminder of the power of journalism. These pieces from writers driven to explore America's fault lines include Shane Bauer's harrowing "My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard" (Mother Jones), a visceral portrait of the abuses of the carceral system, and Sarah Stillman's account of the havoc wreaked on young people's lives when they are put on sex-offender registries (The New Yorker). In two different considerations of parenting,...