Product Description
Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads hundreds of pieces from dozens of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to the twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind. From The New Yorker to the Missouri Review, from Esquire to the American Scholar, the editors of The Best American Essays have scoured hundreds of the country's best periodicals in search of the most artful and powerful writing around. This thoughtful, provocative collection is the result of their search. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Another Book Dominated by Male Writers
Out of 24 essays, only four are by women authors.When will we exit the Dark Ages?

Another Gem
This is another fine collection of essays in the Best American series, and perhaps it stands out also for two other reasons.First, it was edited by Stephen J. Gould shortly before his death, and, secondly, because it is a thematically-driven collection.Five years have passed since its publication, and I think the essays--as a collection--have an especially poignant connection to each other.They are personal, heartfelt, and decidedly reflective; most are beautifully written (as one would expect from a Best American collection); some are stunning in their quietly stated emotion.

The best essays?I'm a big fan of David Halberstam and Atul Gawande; they can do no wrong, and both of their essays are top notch.I liked the Richard Price and Anne Hudson-Price collaboration.Mario Vargas Llosa's essay is wonderful.My personal favorite in this book, however, is "Fire" by Amy Kolen, a powerful essay that captures the sweep of history and the dignity of lost lives.If we learned anything from 9/11, the event that this collection memorializes, it is that innocent citizens--women and men who care little about politics, who just want to go to work and earn a living and support a family--are often the tragic victims of greedy and politics.

Very timestamped, some powerful pieces
I stumbled upon this gem a few weeks ago at a used book store. What made me buy it (I didn't have time to finish reading it in-house) was the essay "Winner Take Nothing." It's a poignant tale of a middle age man coming to terms with the nature of his relationship with his father, particularly in light of his fahter's aging. It alone is worth the price of admission: it really lingers with you, and does what good literature should, it may alter the way you view your world, and even your parents.

Unlike the editor, I love confessional, stream of conscious, intensely personal narratives, and post 9/11 2002 (the year in which the essays were taken from) are loaded with them. Being that we are away from September 11, you may find the 9/11 essays enlightening in a long-term context, or you may just be a little saturated (like I was). It depends on the person.

The essays that really stand out in my mind of a non WTC variety are "My Father's Brain" and another one on a woman's journey with her son with a debilitating illness. These both haunt you and give a satisfying commentary on the nature of love, family, memory, human self-preservation and the darker aspects of duty: guilt, selfishness, fatigue and even resentment. I found "My Father's Brain" to be particulary well written and structured.

I think what's so great about these essays is: they're alive. Essays can have all the stimulating quality of warm milk. But these essays are *essays,* but they do more than just prognosticate and drone on in correct format. They educate, they emote, they live and they entertain. And I think that is why this volume was so enjoyable.

a chance to have CANCERLAND essay by barbara ehenreich
this essay was printed in Harpers and isn't available ANY WHERE else but in this book. It is easier to buy this book than to look for an old issue of Harpers. This is the BEST essay on breast cancer imho. It is wise and perceptive and cuts through a lot of the pink stuff of breast cancer activism. elsa dorfman, NoHairDay collective. Cambridge, MA

Thought provoking and absorbing
I had the false impression that the writing and thoughts in this year's Best American Essays would be overwhelmed by the events of September 11, but this book provides a lot of breadth and depth. Gould's selections are excellent; I can't think of a single essay here that does not have some kind of redeeming value. Jacques Barzun's The Tenth Muse and Mario Vargas Lhosa's "Why Literature?" are the requisite but eloquent pieces about the nature and necessity of art. Danielle Ofri's "Merced" is a standout piece: about how a young doctor learns about the fallibility of medicine through a patient's unsolvable illness. I disagree with the reviewers here who found Gore Vidal's "The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh" unworthy of inclusion in the volume; the essay shows another view on the perpetrator of the Oklahoma City bombing that warrants us to consider why some people commit acts of terror, though the piece ultimately fails when Vidal utilizes tired and trite anti government rhetoric. Nicholas Delblanco's "The Countess of Stanlein Restored" is an absorbing history of the origins and restoration of a Stradivarius cello. Adam Mayblum's "The Price We Pay" does not have the polish and pyrotechnics we expect from some of these essayists, but his straightforward telling of his escape from the World Trade towers on September 11 makes for a harrowing recounting of the events. ... Read more

Product Description

Stephen King's unparalleled imagination is in full force in this collection of four unabridged short stories originally found in the classic, Nightmares & Dreamscapes. Stephen King and an all-star cast of readers bring to life these timeless stories from the darkest places.

Mysterious machinery begins to take over The House on Maple Street. A private detective finds out that he is merely the character in crime novel in Umney's Last Case. In the non-fiction piece Head Down, King chronicles the 1989 season of his son Owen's little league baseball team and their journey to the Maine State Championships. And as a companion to Head Down, Brooklyn August takes a nostalgic look back on the glory days of professional baseball.

Stephen King, Tabitha King, Robert Parker, and Stephen J. Gould lend their voices to this haunting collection of classic stories that no Stephen King fan should be without. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Stephen King on disc
I like it. Was thinking it was all Stephen Kings on the disc. However they are not all Stephen King.. Still great deal for the money.

If you like to listen to Stehan King buy this.
I liked most of the CD.But baseball isn't my thing and the last entry is nothing but his baseball story.I didn't read it in the book and gave up listening to it too.I just think sports are very dull.

Stephen King
As usual, I loved this book, but then again - I really love Stephen King. The only reason I gave 4 stars instead of 5 is because the last two CDs are an essay that King wrote about his son's little league season. I personally liked it, but if you are looking for typical Stephen King, then you may not like this one as much.

I would definately recommend buying it to any Stephen King fan. Also, the price is very good for a 5 CD set.

Stephen and his wife tell the tales
For a road trip, there is nothing like a good book.... on audio.Stephen and his wife, and other narrators, read the text with the appropriate nuances.... excellent product.
And no one else can scare the heck out of you like Stephen King! ... Read more

Product Description
Completed shortly before his death, this is the last work of science from the most celebrated popular science writer on the world. In characteristic form, Gould weaves the ideas of some of Wester society's greatest thinkers, from Bacon to Galileo to EO Wilson, with uncelebrated ideas of lesser-known yet pivotal intellectuals. He uses their ideas to undo an assumption born in the seventeenth century and continuing to this day, that science and humanities stand in opposition. Gould uses the metaphor of the hedgehog - who goes after one thing at a measured pace, systematically investigating all; the fox - skilled at many things, intuitive and fast; and the magister's pox - a censure form the Catholic Church involved in Galileo's downfall; a metaphor which illustrates the different ways of responding to knowledge - in a scientific, humanistic or fearful way. He argues that in fact each would benefit by borrowing from each other. ... Read more

Product Description
As stated" Stephen Jay Gould explodes our misperceptions about the nature of progres, the nature of progress, the nature of excellence, and the nature of nature". ... Read more

Product Description
"There is grandeur in this view of life," wrote Charles Darwin in the last line of THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, "with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one."

In THE PANDA'S THUMB, Gould delights and instructs while deepening and extending his examination of evolution, a centerpiece of modern science. Were dinosaurs really dumber than lizards? Why are roughly the same number of men and women born? What do the panda's magical "thumb" and the sea turtle's perilous migration tell us about imperfections that prove the evolutionary rule?

"These questions of life lie on a continuum that touches us all. Seldom have their mysteries been explained with such wit, beauty and elegance." (Publisher's Source) ... Read more

Product Description
This collection of essays range from history to the latest theories in biology, from controversies over palaeontology to the origins of language. The title is a pun and as always with Gould, the joke has a point that illustrates the largest pattern of life's history. for millennia, the animals that populated the earth had four toes on each foot, or six. If evolution had taken a tiny shift - if man's ancestors had inherited a couple of genes in a different form - our canonical number, based on man's fingers and toes, might be eight instead of ten. Stephen Jay Gould has also written "Wonderful Life", "Bully for Brontosaurus" and "Finders Keepers". ... Read more

Product Description
In this collection of essays, first published in the New York Review of Books, Stephen Jay Gould proves once again why he has been called the finest science essayist of our age. Ranging as far as the fox and as deep as the hedgehog (the urchin of the title), Gould fashions for the reader a coherent and rational world view, the view of an evolutionist committed to understanding the curious pathways of history.

Gould's special gift lies in his ability to answer the question "Why?" Of all the questions man can propound himself, this is surely the most difficult and profound.

"No one knows more about Darwin and evolution than Gould does. No one writes more clearly on these subjects than Gould does. No one is better equipped to deal with fallacies in this field than Gould is. This collection of reviews is the proof." --Isaac Asimov ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Another good series of essays
Gould regularly publishes collections of his quirky but erudite essays which he has eiher written for publication or presented to an audience.The topics covered are the ones he always covers but that does not distract from their excellence or interest.There are discussions about life, evolution in all its variations, several storiettes on particular aspects of the biological kingdom - wasps, trees and urchins.

Once he leaves the scientific world and ventures into the cultural wars, the writing becomes murkier.In his efforts to promote a one-size-fits-all human culture, he often ignores specific traits of subcultures.In his belief on the inherent potential quality of all humans, he discounts (and continues to discount) findings that suggest some groups are smarter than others. He often selects easy targest for his disdain: Rural creationists, UFO nuts, believers in Big Foot, etc. where little effort is required to explain the absurdities of such groups.

One point, perhaps the most salient one made in the entire book, is that nature and evolution limited similarity thereby bestowing on us a multitude of species rather than variations of just a few.All in all, a good read. ... Read more