the best american essays 2021 pdf

The Best American Essays

Ponder life. Read an essay today.

Sunday, July 25, 2021

Richard wright.

- p. 589-90,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

Edmund Wilson

- p. 589,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

Eudora Welty

- p. 588,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

Alice Walker

John updike.

- p. 587-8,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

- p. 587,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

James Thurber

Lewis thomas.

- p. 586-7,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

Gertrude Stein

- p. 586,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

Richard Rodriguez

- p. 585,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

Adrienne Rich

Katherine anne porter.

- p. 584-5,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

S.J. Perelman

- p. 584,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

Vladimir Nabokov

- p. 583,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

- p. 582-3,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

N. Scott Momaday

- p. 582,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

H.L. Mencken

John mcphee.

- p. 581-2,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

Mary McCarthy

- p. 581,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

William Manchester

- p. 580-1,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

Maxine Hong Kingston

- p. 580,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

Martin Luther King, Jr.

William james.

- p. 579-80,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

Zora Neale Hurston

- p. 579,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

Langston Hughes

- p. 578-9,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

Michael Herr

- p. 578,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

Ernest Hemingway

- p. 577-8,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

Robert Frost

- p. 575-6,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

F. Scott Fitzgerald

- p. 575,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

Loren Eiseley

- p. 574-5,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

W.E.B. Du Bois

- p. 573,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

Joan Didion

-  p. 572-3,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

John Jay Chapman

-  p. 572,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

Rachel Carson

Randolph bourne.

-  p. 571,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

Saul Bellow

James baldwin.

-  p. 570-1,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

Maya Angelou

-  p. 570,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

Monday, June 21, 2021

Jane addams.

-  p. 569,   The Best American Essays of the Century .

Henry Adams

The great-grandson of John Adams and grandson of John Quincy Adams, the prominent Bostonian Henry Adams  (1838-1918) did not follow their illustrious paths to the U.S. presidency. Instead, he devoted himself to writing, producing several multivolume histories of the nation, an enormous quantity of political journalism, and two novels. He is best known today for two nonfiction works (both privately printed) that grew out of his scientific theory of history, Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres  (1904) and    The Education of Henry Adams  (1907), a third-person autobiography that imagines Americans in the year 2000 while pursuing one of the earliest investigations into ideas of chaos and complexity. Having moved to Washington in 1877 with his wife (who committed suicide in 1885, an incident not mentioned in the autobiography), Adams quickly became an "insider," forming acquaintances with practically every president until his death at age eighty. See Henry Adams: Novels, Mont-Saint-Michel, The Education  (ed. Ernest and Jayne N. Samuels, 1983).

Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Tracy kidder.

- The Best American Essays 1994 .

Ian Frazier

- The Best American Essays 1997 .

Edward Hoagland

- Back Cover, The Best American Essays 1999 .

Stephen Jay Gould

- p. 576-7,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

- Back Cover, The Best American Essays 2002 .

Louis Menand

- Back Cover, The Best American Essays 2004 .

Susan Orlean

- Back Cover, The Best American Essays 2005 .

Lauren Slater

- Back Cover, The Best American Essays 2006 .

David Foster Wallace

- Back Cover, The Best American Essays 2007 .

Kathryn Schulz

- Back Cover, The Best American Essays 2021 .

Sunday, May 9, 2021

Bernard farai matambo.

- p. , The Best American Essays 2018 .

Greg Marshall

Emily maloney, alan lightman.

- The Best American Essays 2000 .

Steven Harvey

Sunday, february 14, 2021, the best american essays 1987.

• RICHARD BEN CRAMER .     What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now?
• JOHN GREGORY DUNNE .     On Writing a Novel

Friday, February 12, 2021

-  The Best American Essays 1987  (p. 318). Ticknor & Fields.

Geoffrey C. Ward

- Back Cover, The Best American Essays 1996 .

Calvin Trillin

Robert stone, scott russell sanders.

-  The Best American Essays 1987  (p. 317-8). Ticknor & Fields.

Phyllis Rose

-  The Best American Essays 1987  (p. 317). Ticknor & Fields.

Gregor Von Rezzori

Samuel pickering, jr., william pfaff, elting e. morison, barry lopez.

Barry Lopez on Amazon

BARRY LOPEZ (1945-2020) published the novel Horizon  in 2019. The New York Times Book Review  called it "...beautiful and brutal—a story of the universal human condition." A celebrated writer of fiction and nonfiction, Lopez was awarded the National Book Award for Arctic Dreams  and the John Burrows Medal for Of Wolves and Men ; he received a Guggenheim fellowship among other honors. In 2020, Lopez was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and received the Sun Valley Writers' Conference's first Writer in the World Prize. Throughout his writing life, Lopez collaborated with dozens of international writers and artists and fostered the careers of many younger men and women. For fifty years, Lopez lived next to his beloved McKenzie River in Oregon yet also traveled to more than eighty countries, where he enjoyed rich friendships. He died in December 2020, surrounded by his family.

-  The Best American Essays 2021  (p. 203). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

BARRY LOPEZ has published several collections of short stories and is the author of Arctic Dreams , which won an American Book Award in 1986, and Of Wolves and Men , which won the John Burroughs Medal in 1979. A contributing editor to Harper's  and North American Review , he has received an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. His new book, Crossing Open Ground , will be published next year. 

-  The Best American Essays 1987  (p. 316-7). Ticknor & Fields.

Phillip Lopate

-  The Best American Essays 1987  (p. 316). Ticknor & Fields.

Donald Hall

- p. 577,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

Gary Giddins

Daniel mark epstein, gretel ehrlich.

- p. 574,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

-  The Best American Essays 1987  (p. 315). Ticknor & Fields.

John Gregory Dunne

Richard ben cramer, thursday, february 11, 2021, the american scholar.

https://theamericanscholar.org/

• JOSEPH EPSTEIN .     They Said You Was High Class

The Best American Essays 1986

• John Wain .     JULIA

Southwest Review

http://southwestreview.com/

• Frederick Turner .    VISIONS OF THE PACIFIC    240

Foreign Affairs

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/

• George F. Kennan .    MORALITY AND FOREIGN POLICY    188

The New Republic

https://newrepublic.com/

• Anne Hollander .     DRESSED TO THRILL    174
• Edward Rothstein .    THE BODY OF BACH    227

Natural History

https://naturalhistorymag.com/

• Stephen Jay Gould .    NASTY LITTLE FACTS    161

House & Garden

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_%26_Garden_(magazine)

• William Gass .    CHINA STILL LIFES    152

https://www.thenation.com/

• Kai Erikson .    OF ACCIDENTAL JUDGMENTS AND CASUAL SLAUGHTERS    116

The Kenyon Review

https://kenyonreview.org/

• Gerald Early .    THE PASSING OF JAZZ'S OLD GUARD: REMEMBERING CHARLES MINGUS, THELONIOUS MONK, AND SONNY STITT    93

Grand Street

http://www.grandstreet.com/

• GARY GIDDINS .     "This Guy Wouldn't Give You the Parsley off His Fish"
• Alexander Cockburn .     HEATHERDOWN: A LATE IMPERIALIST MEMOIR

The New York Times Book Review

https://www.nytimes.com/section/books/review

• Julian Barnes .    THE FOLLIES OF WRITER WORSHIP    1

- p. 285, The Best American Essays 1986 .

Frederick Turner

Edward rothstein, cynthia ozick.

"An essay," claims Cynthia Ozick , "is a thing of the imagination...A genuine essay has no educational, polemical, or sociopolitical use; it is movement of a free mind at play." Essays, like the award-winning short stories and novels, she is known for, are imaginative and aesthetic experiments — in other words, literature — not position papers. Born (1928) in the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx, Ozick grew up in the atmosphere of a family-operated drugstore. After receiving her B.A. at New York University in 1949 and a year later an M.A. at Ohio State, Ozick called it quits with academic life and set out to take lessons from her master, Henry James, in the demanding art of fiction. Her first novel, Trust , appeared in 1966 and was followed by several volumes of short fiction and three more novels, The Cannibal Galaxy  (1983),   The Messiah of Stockholm  (1987), and The Puttermesser Papers  (1997). Her personal and literary essays appear in four collections: Art & Ardor  (1983), Metaphor & Memory  (1989), Fame & Folly  (1986), and   Quarrel & Quandary  (2000). She is also the author of two essay collections on writing,   What Henry James Knew  (1993) and Portrait of the Artist as a Bad Character  (1996). Ozick was guest editor of The Best American Essay of 1998 .

- Back Cover, The Best American Essays 1998 .

- p. 284-5, The Best American Essays 1986 .

George F. Kennan

- p. 284, The Best American Essays 1986 .

Anne Hollander

William h. gass.

- p. 576,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

Robert Fitzgerald

Kai erikson.

- p. 283-4, The Best American Essays 1986 .

Gerald Early

- p. 573-4,  The Best American Essays of the Century .

- p. 283, The Best American Essays 1986 .

Alexander Cockburn

ALEXANDER COCKBURN has been an Irish citizen resident of the United States since 1973. He writes regular columns for The Nation and The Wall Street Journal , and contributes to many magazines. He is currently writing books about the press and about automobiles.

How to be an Obedient Asian in America

Use few words. Speak less, be unnoticeable. Know when to speak, and know what you're talking about when you speak. Forget what they told you about how you have to make mistakes to learn. Bullshit. That is for them, not you. Learn on your own, do not ask for help. Be useful in whatever you do. Yes, they will talk about you. How you are unsociable. But they also know for a fact, that you are useful.

Forget about equality. You aren't even fun enough to have beer with. It doesn't matter how well you do your job. You won't be part of them. You won't be part of them when they are laughing and joking during work, while you're the only one who's actually working at work. Be unnoticeable until they come to collect your products of your work. And they will reap the fruits of your work, while they're laughing and joking with a beer in their hands with your boss. They will tell you that you're doing great, that you're a Great American. Yeah, whatever, now you're probably like, fuck America.

Be sure to be frugal. Max out your 401k, and do the same for your IRA. In the end you will be a millionaire, and you won't have to see them again. But in retirement they won't even realize the bad financial decisions they've made, because those laughs and jokes got them higher than your hard work. They will keep on enjoying their beers and laughing an joking, and you will die a millionaire because you never unlearned being frugal.

In your deathbed you will wonder why all the troubles you endured being an obedient Asian in America, you will die yearning for the land you left to be free. You've made this land of the free more fertile, and your sons and daughters won't realize how free they are because the never experienced the opposite.

But rest in peace, be assured that your heirs will be real Americans. Their friends will joke and giggle how stereo-typically rich they are, from the money you never learned to waste. They won't even get offended at the Asian jokes and racial slurs because their origin is blurred. In America it doesn't matter what race you are, as long as you know how to laugh and giggle over a beer. If then you will be part of the team, no matter where the team headed.

Lionel Shriver

A prolific journalist with columns in The Spectator and Harper's Magazine , LIONEL SHRIVER has published one short story collection and fourteen novels, including the bestsellers The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047 ; Big Brother ; So Much for That ; The Post-Birthday World ; and the Orange Prize winner We Need to Talk About Kevin (a 2011 feature film starring Tilda Swinton). Her latest novel is The Motion of the Body Through Space (2020). Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. She lives in London and Brooklyn, New York.

- p. 276, The Best American Essays 2020 .

• Available Now
• New eBook Additions
• New Kids Additions
• New Teen Additions
• Most Popular
• Try Something Different
• Biography & Autobiography
• Audiobook Appreciation
• New Audiobook Additions
• Audiobooks for Kids
• Great Narrators
• Audiobooks with Diverse Narrators
• Audiobooks for the Whole Family
• Science Fiction
• All Audiobooks
• Kindle Books
• World Languages
• Diverse Reads

The Best American Essays 2021

Description.

A collection of the year’s best essays, selected by award-winning journalist and New Yorker  staff writer Kathryn Schulz “The world is abundant even in bad times,” guest editor Kathryn Schulz writes in her introduction, “it is lush with interestingness, and always, somewhere, offering up consolation or beauty or humor or happiness, or at least the hope of future happiness.” The essays Schulz selected are a powerful time capsule of 2020, showcasing that even if our lives as we knew them stopped, the beauty to be found in them flourished. From an intimate account of nursing a loved one in the early days of the pandemic, to a masterful portrait of grieving the loss of a husband as the country grieved the loss of George Floyd, this collection brilliantly shapes the grief, hardship, and hope of a singular year. The Best American Essays 2021 includes ELIZABETH ALEXANDER • HILTON ALS • GABRIELLE HAMILTON • RUCHIR JOSHI • PATRICIA LOCKWOOD• CLAIRE MESSUD • WESLEY MORRIS • BETH NGUYEN • JESMYN WARD and others

• Kathryn Schulz - Editor
• Robert Atwan - Author

Kindle Book

• Release date: April 16, 2024

OverDrive Read

• ISBN: 9780358381228
• File size: 2863 KB

Kindle Book OverDrive Read EPUB ebook

Fiction Mystery Short Stories Thriller

Publisher: HarperCollins

Kindle Book Release date: April 16, 2024

OverDrive Read ISBN: 9780358381228 Release date: April 16, 2024

EPUB ebook ISBN: 9780358381228 File size: 2863 KB Release date: April 16, 2024

• Formats Kindle Book OverDrive Read EPUB ebook
• Languages English

Why is availability limited?

Availability can change throughout the month based on the library's budget. You can still place a hold on the title, and your hold will be automatically filled as soon as the title is available again.

The Kindle Book format for this title is not supported on:

Read-along ebook.

The OverDrive Read format of this ebook has professional narration that plays while you read in your browser. Learn more here.

Recommendation limit reached

You've reached the maximum number of titles you can currently recommend for purchase.

Session expired

Your session has expired. Please sign in again so you can continue to borrow titles and access your Loans, Wish list, and Holds pages.

If you're still having trouble, follow these steps to sign in.

Add a library card to your account to borrow titles, place holds, and add titles to your wish list.

Have a card? Add it now to start borrowing from the collection.

Need a card? Sign up for one using your mobile number.

The library card you previously added can't be used to complete this action. Please add your card again, or add a different card. If you receive an error message, please contact your library for help.

• Find a Library
• Browse Collections
• The Best American Essays 2021

ebook ∣ Best American Essays

By kathryn schulz.

Add Book To Favorites

Is this your library?

Sign up to save your library.

With an OverDrive account, you can save your favorite libraries for at-a-glance information about availability. Find out more about OverDrive accounts.

9780358381754

Best American Essays

Kathryn Schulz

HarperCollins

12 October 2021

Find this title in Libby, the library reading app by OverDrive.

Search for a digital library with this title

Title found at these libraries:.

• Available now
• New eBook additions
• New kids additions
• New teen additions
• Most popular
• Try something different
• NYPL WNYC Virtual Book Club
• Spotlight: Toni Morrison
• New audiobook additions
• Kindle Books
• World Languages
• Français (Canada)

The Best American Essays 2021

Description.

A collection of the year’s best essays, selected by award-winning journalist and New Yorker  staff writer Kathryn Schulz “The world is abundant even in bad times,” guest editor Kathryn Schulz writes in her introduction, “it is lush with interestingness, and always, somewhere, offering up consolation or beauty or humor or happiness, or at least the hope of future happiness.” The essays Schulz selected are a powerful time capsule of 2020, showcasing that even if our lives as we knew them stopped, the beauty to be found in them flourished. From an intimate account of nursing a loved one in the early days of the pandemic, to a masterful portrait of grieving the loss of a husband as the country grieved the loss of George Floyd, this collection brilliantly shapes the grief, hardship, and hope of a singular year. The Best American Essays 2021 includes ELIZABETH ALEXANDER • HILTON ALS • GABRIELLE HAMILTON • RUCHIR JOSHI • PATRICIA LOCKWOOD• CLAIRE MESSUD • WESLEY MORRIS • BETH NGUYEN • JESMYN WARD and others

• Kathryn Schulz - Editor
• Robert Atwan - Author

Kindle Book

• Release date: April 16, 2024

OverDrive Read

• ISBN: 9780358381228
• File size: 2863 KB

Kindle Book OverDrive Read EPUB ebook

Fiction Mystery Short Stories Thriller

Publisher: HarperCollins

Kindle Book Release date: April 16, 2024

OverDrive Read ISBN: 9780358381228 Release date: April 16, 2024

EPUB ebook ISBN: 9780358381228 File size: 2863 KB Release date: April 16, 2024

• Formats Kindle Book OverDrive Read EPUB ebook
• Languages English

Why is availability limited?

Availability can change throughout the month based on the library's budget. You can still place a hold on the title, and your hold will be automatically filled as soon as the title is available again.

The Kindle Book format for this title is not supported on:

Read-along ebook.

The OverDrive Read format of this ebook has professional narration that plays while you read in your browser. Learn more here.

Recommendation limit reached

You've reached the maximum number of titles you can currently recommend for purchase.

Session expired

Your session has expired. Please sign in again so you can continue to borrow titles and access your Loans, Wish list, and Holds pages.

If you're still having trouble, follow these steps to sign in.

Add a library card to your account to borrow titles, place holds, and add titles to your wish list.

Have a card? Add it now to start borrowing from the collection.

The library card you previously added can't be used to complete this action. Please add your card again, or add a different card. If you receive an error message, please contact your library for help.

The Best American Essays 2021

Kathryn schulz , robert atwan.

256 pages, Paperback

First published October 12, 2021

About the author

Kathryn Schulz

Ratings & reviews.

What do you think? Rate this book Write a Review

Friends & Following

Community reviews.

Join the discussion

Can't find what you're looking for.

The Best American Essays 2021

by Kathryn Schulz, Robert Atwan

• On Sale: 10/12/2021

Price: $16.99

Format: Trade PB

• Book Overview
• Author Info

About the Book

A collection of the year’s best essays, selected by award-winning journalist and New Yorker  staff writer Kathryn Schulz

“The world is abundant even in bad times,” guest editor Kathryn Schulz writes in her introduction, “it is lush with interestingness, and always, somewhere, offering up consolation or beauty or humor or happiness, or at least the hope of future happiness.” The essays Schulz selected are a powerful time capsule of 2020, showcasing that even if our lives as we knew them stopped, the beauty to be found in them flourished. From an intimate account of nursing a loved one in the early days of the pandemic, to a masterful portrait of grieving the loss of a husband as the country grieved the loss of George Floyd, this collection brilliantly shapes the grief, hardship, and hope of a singular year.

The Best American Essays 2021 includes ELIZABETH ALEXANDER • HILTON ALS • GABRIELLE HAMILTON • RUCHIR JOSHI • PATRICIA LOCKWOOD• CLAIRE MESSUD • WESLEY MORRIS • BETH NGUYEN • JESMYN WARD and others

Product Details

• ISBN: 9780358381754
• ISBN 10: 0358381754
• Imprint: Mariner Books
• Trimsize: 5.500 in (w) x 8.250 in (h) x 0.000 in (d)
• List Price: $16.99
• BISAC1 : FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Collections & Anthologies
• BISAC2 : LITERARY COLLECTIONS / American / General
• BISAC3 : LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Essays

Photo by Michael Polito

Kathryn Schulz

Kathryn Schulz is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine , Rolling Stone , Foreign Policy , the Nation , the Boston Globe , and the ""Freakonomics"" blog of the New York Times . She lives in New York's Hudson Valley.

Being Wrong: The Book

Kathryn Schulz at the Huffington Post

Author Url's

Robert Atwan

ROBERT ATWAN has been the series editor of The Best American Essays since its inception in 1986. He has edited numerous literary anthologies and written essays and reviews for periodicals nationwide.

Jump to navigation Skip to content

Search form

• P&W on Facebook
• P&W on Twitter
• P&W on Instagram

Find details about every creative writing competition—including poetry contests, short story competitions, essay contests, awards for novels, grants for translators, and more—that we’ve published in the Grants & Awards section of Poets & Writers Magazine during the past year. We carefully review the practices and policies of each contest before including it in the Writing Contests database, the most trusted resource for legitimate writing contests available anywhere.

Find a home for your poems, stories, essays, and reviews by researching the publications vetted by our editorial staff. In the Literary Magazines database you’ll find editorial policies, submission guidelines, contact information—everything you need to know before submitting your work to the publications that share your vision for your work.

Whether you’re pursuing the publication of your first book or your fifth, use the Small Presses database to research potential publishers, including submission guidelines, tips from the editors, contact information, and more.

Research more than one hundred agents who represent poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers, plus details about the kinds of books they’re interested in representing, their clients, and the best way to contact them.

Every week a new publishing professional shares advice, anecdotes, insights, and new ways of thinking about writing and the business of books.

Find publishers ready to read your work now with our Open Reading Periods page, a continually updated resource listing all the literary magazines and small presses currently open for submissions.

Since our founding in 1970, Poets & Writers has served as an information clearinghouse of all matters related to writing. While the range of inquiries has been broad, common themes have emerged over time. Our Top Topics for Writers addresses the most popular and pressing issues, including literary agents, copyright, MFA programs, and self-publishing.

Our series of subject-based handbooks (PDF format; $4.99 each) provide information and advice from authors, literary agents, editors, and publishers. Now available: The Poets & Writers Guide to Publicity and Promotion, The Poets & Writers Guide to the Book Deal, The Poets & Writers Guide to Literary Agents, The Poets & Writers Guide to MFA Programs, and The Poets & Writers Guide to Writing Contests.

Find a home for your work by consulting our searchable databases of writing contests, literary magazines, small presses, literary agents, and more.

Poets & Writers lists readings, workshops, and other literary events held in cities across the country. Whether you are an author on book tour or the curator of a reading series, the Literary Events Calendar can help you find your audience.

Get the Word Out is a new publicity incubator for debut fiction writers and poets.

Research newspapers, magazines, websites, and other publications that consistently publish book reviews using the Review Outlets database, which includes information about publishing schedules, submission guidelines, fees, and more.

Well over ten thousand poets and writers maintain listings in this essential resource for writers interested in connecting with their peers, as well as editors, agents, and reading series coordinators looking for authors. Apply today to join the growing community of writers who stay in touch and informed using the Poets & Writers Directory.

Let the world know about your work by posting your events on our literary events calendar, apply to be included in our directory of writers, and more.

Find a writers group to join or create your own with Poets & Writers Groups. Everything you need to connect, communicate, and collaborate with other poets and writers—all in one place.

Find information about more than two hundred full- and low-residency programs in creative writing in our MFA Programs database, which includes details about deadlines, funding, class size, core faculty, and more. Also included is information about more than fifty MA and PhD programs.

Whether you are looking to meet up with fellow writers, agents, and editors, or trying to find the perfect environment to fuel your writing practice, the Conferences & Residencies is the essential resource for information about well over three hundred writing conferences, writers residencies, and literary festivals around the world.

Discover historical sites, independent bookstores, literary archives, writing centers, and writers spaces in cities across the country using the Literary Places database—the best starting point for any literary journey, whether it’s for research or inspiration.

Search for jobs in education, publishing, the arts, and more within our free, frequently updated job listings for writers and poets.

Establish new connections and enjoy the company of your peers using our searchable databases of MFA programs and writers retreats, apply to be included in our directory of writers, and more.

• Register for Classes

Each year the Readings & Workshops program provides support to hundreds of writers participating in literary readings and conducting writing workshops. Learn more about this program, our special events, projects, and supporters, and how to contact us.

The Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award introduces emerging writers to the New York City literary community, providing them with a network for professional advancement.

Find information about how Poets & Writers provides support to hundreds of writers participating in literary readings and conducting writing workshops.

Bring the literary world to your door—at half the newsstand price. Available in print and digital editions, Poets & Writers Magazine is a must-have for writers who are serious about their craft.

View the contents and read select essays, articles, interviews, and profiles from the current issue of the award-winning Poets & Writers Magazine .

Read essays, articles, interviews, profiles, and other select content from Poets & Writers Magazine as well as Online Exclusives.

View the covers and contents of every issue of Poets & Writers Magazine , from the current edition all the way back to the first black-and-white issue in 1987.

Every day the editors of Poets & Writers Magazine scan the headlines—publishing reports, literary dispatches, academic announcements, and more—for all the news that creative writers need to know.

In our weekly series of craft essays, some of the best and brightest minds in contemporary literature explore their craft in compact form, articulating their thoughts about creative obsessions and curiosities in a working notebook of lessons about the art of writing.

The Time Is Now offers weekly writing prompts in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction to help you stay committed to your writing practice throughout the year. Sign up to get The Time Is Now, as well as a weekly book recommendation for guidance and inspiration, delivered to your inbox.

Every week a new author shares books, art, music, writing prompts, films—anything and everything—that has inspired and shaped the creative process.

Listen to original audio recordings of authors featured in Poets & Writers Magazine . Browse the archive of more than 400 author readings.

Ads in Poets & Writers Magazine and on pw.org are the best ways to reach a readership of serious poets and literary prose writers. Our audience trusts our editorial content and looks to it, and to relevant advertising, for information and guidance.

Start, renew, or give a subscription to Poets & Writers Magazine ; change your address; check your account; pay your bill; report a missed issue; contact us.

Peruse paid listings of writing contests, conferences, workshops, editing services, calls for submissions, and more.

Poets & Writers is pleased to provide free subscriptions to Poets & Writers Magazine to award-winning young writers and to high school creative writing teachers for use in their classrooms.

Read select articles from the award-winning magazine and consult the most comprehensive listing of literary grants and awards, deadlines, and prizewinners available in print.

• Subscribe Now

The Best American Essays 2021

• Printable Version
• Log in to Send
• Log in to Save

“The world is abundant even in bad times; it is lush with interestingness, and always, somewhere, offering up consolation or beauty or humor or happiness, or at least the hope of future happiness,” writes guest editor Kathryn Schulz in the introduction to The Best American Essays 2021 . Featuring essays by Elizabeth Alexander, Molly McCully Brown, Dawn Lundy Martin, and Wesley Morris, to name a few, this installment of the annual anthology captures writers at work during a historic year of grief and tumult. From an intimate account of nursing a loved one during the pandemic to an exploration of the political and aesthetic history of a mustache, this collection demonstrates what it is to be writing during an unprecedented time, offering readers and writers solace and inspiration through rigorous prose.  

More Best Books for Writers

We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us!

• Love is in the Air!
• Available now
• New eBook additions
• New kids additions
• New teen additions
• Most popular
• Try something different
• Great Narrators
• New audiobook additions
• Popular Magazine Titles
• Home and Garden
• Health & Fitness
• News and Politics
• Hobbies & Crafts
• Celebrity & Entertainment
• Tech and Gaming
• Cars and Motorcycles
• Family & Parenting
• Travel & Outdoors
• Boating & Aviation
• Business & Finance
• Kindle Books
• Partner libraries New! You can use your Mohawk Valley Library System card to borrow titles from these partner libraries: Mid-Hudson Library System Southern Adirondack Library System Upper Hudson Library System

The Best American Essays 2021

Description.

A collection of the year’s best essays, selected by award-winning journalist and New Yorker  staff writer Kathryn Schulz “The world is abundant even in bad times,” guest editor Kathryn Schulz writes in her introduction, “it is lush with interestingness, and always, somewhere, offering up consolation or beauty or humor or happiness, or at least the hope of future happiness.” The essays Schulz selected are a powerful time capsule of 2020, showcasing that even if our lives as we knew them stopped, the beauty to be found in them flourished. From an intimate account of nursing a loved one in the early days of the pandemic, to a masterful portrait of grieving the loss of a husband as the country grieved the loss of George Floyd, this collection brilliantly shapes the grief, hardship, and hope of a singular year. The Best American Essays 2021 includes ELIZABETH ALEXANDER • HILTON ALS • GABRIELLE HAMILTON • RUCHIR JOSHI • PATRICIA LOCKWOOD• CLAIRE MESSUD • WESLEY MORRIS • BETH NGUYEN • JESMYN WARD and others

• Kathryn Schulz - Editor
• Robert Atwan - Author

Kindle Book

• Release date: April 16, 2024

OverDrive Read

• ISBN: 9780358381228
• File size: 2863 KB

Kindle Book OverDrive Read EPUB ebook

Fiction Mystery Short Stories Thriller

Publisher: HarperCollins

Kindle Book Release date: April 16, 2024

OverDrive Read ISBN: 9780358381228 Release date: April 16, 2024

EPUB ebook ISBN: 9780358381228 File size: 2863 KB Release date: April 16, 2024

• Formats Kindle Book OverDrive Read EPUB ebook
• Languages English

Why is availability limited?

Availability can change throughout the month based on the library's budget. You can still place a hold on the title, and your hold will be automatically filled as soon as the title is available again.

The Kindle Book format for this title is not supported on:

Read-along ebook.

The OverDrive Read format of this ebook has professional narration that plays while you read in your browser. Learn more here.

Recommendation limit reached

You've reached the maximum number of titles you can currently recommend for purchase.

Session expired

Your session has expired. Please sign in again so you can continue to borrow titles and access your Loans, Wish list, and Holds pages.

If you're still having trouble, follow these steps to sign in.

Add a library card to your account to borrow titles, place holds, and add titles to your wish list.

Have a card? Add it now to start borrowing from the collection.

The library card you previously added can't be used to complete this action. Please add your card again, or add a different card. If you receive an error message, please contact your library for help.

The Best American Essays 2021

Edited by kathryn schulz. mariner, $16.99 trade paper (256p) isbn 978-0-358-38175-4.

Reviewed on: 09/09/2021

Genre: Nonfiction

Other - 256 pages - 978-0-358-38122-8

• Apple Books
• Barnes & Noble

Featured Nonfiction Reviews

• NONFICTION BOOKS
• BEST NONFICTION 2023
• BEST NONFICTION 2024
• Historical Biographies
• The Best Memoirs and Autobiographies
• Philosophical Biographies
• World War 2
• World History
• American History
• British History
• Chinese History
• Russian History
• Ancient History (up to 500)
• Medieval History (500-1400)
• Military History
• Art History
• Travel Books
• Ancient Philosophy
• Contemporary Philosophy
• Ethics & Moral Philosophy
• Great Philosophers
• Social & Political Philosophy
• Classical Studies
• New Science Books
• Maths & Statistics
• Popular Science
• Physics Books
• Climate Change Books
• How to Write
• English Grammar & Usage
• Books for Learning Languages
• Linguistics
• Political Ideologies
• Foreign Policy & International Relations
• American Politics
• British Politics
• Religious History Books
• Mental Health
• Neuroscience
• Child Psychology
• Film & Cinema
• Opera & Classical Music
• Behavioural Economics
• Development Economics
• Economic History
• Financial Crisis
• World Economies
• Investing Books
• Artificial Intelligence/AI Books
• Data Science Books
• Sex & Sexuality
• Death & Dying
• Food & Cooking
• Sports, Games & Hobbies
• FICTION BOOKS
• BEST NOVELS 2024
• BEST FICTION 2023
• New Literary Fiction
• World Literature
• Literary Criticism
• Literary Figures
• Classic English Literature
• American Literature
• Comics & Graphic Novels
• Fairy Tales & Mythology
• Historical Fiction
• Crime Novels
• Science Fiction
• Short Stories
• South Africa
• United States
• Arctic & Antarctica
• Afghanistan
• Myanmar (Formerly Burma)
• Netherlands
• Kids Recommend Books for Kids
• High School Teachers Recommendations
• Prizewinning Kids' Books
• Popular Series Books for Kids
• BEST BOOKS FOR KIDS (ALL AGES)
• Ages Baby-2
• Books for Teens and Young Adults
• THE BEST SCIENCE BOOKS FOR KIDS
• BEST KIDS' BOOKS OF 2023
• BEST BOOKS FOR TEENS OF 2023
• Best Audiobooks for Kids
• Environment
• Best Books for Teens of 2023
• Best Kids' Books of 2023
• Political Novels
• New History Books
• New Historical Fiction
• New Biography
• New Memoirs
• New World Literature
• New Economics Books
• New Climate Books
• New Math Books
• New Philosophy Books
• New Psychology Books
• New Physics Books
• THE BEST AUDIOBOOKS
• Actors Read Great Books
• Books Narrated by Their Authors
• Best Audiobook Thrillers
• Best History Audiobooks
• Nobel Literature Prize
• Booker Prize (fiction)
• Baillie Gifford Prize (nonfiction)
• Financial Times (nonfiction)
• Wolfson Prize (history)
• Royal Society (science)
• Pushkin House Prize (Russia)
• Walter Scott Prize (historical fiction)
• Arthur C Clarke Prize (sci fi)
• The Hugos (sci fi & fantasy)
• Audie Awards (audiobooks)

Make Your Own List

Nonfiction Books » Essays

The best essays: the 2021 pen/diamonstein-spielvogel award, recommended by adam gopnik.

WINNER OF the 2021 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay

Had I Known: Collected Essays by Barbara Ehrenreich

Every year, the judges of the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay search out the best book of essays written in the past year and draw attention to the author's entire body of work. Here, Adam Gopnik , writer, journalist and PEN essay prize judge, emphasizes the role of the essay in bearing witness and explains why the five collections that reached the 2021 shortlist are, in their different ways, so important.

Interview by Benedict King

Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader by Vivian Gornick

Nature Matrix: New and Selected Essays by Robert Michael Pyle

Terroir: Love, Out of Place by Natasha Sajé

Maybe the People Would be the Times by Luc Sante

1 Had I Known: Collected Essays by Barbara Ehrenreich

2 unfinished business: notes of a chronic re-reader by vivian gornick, 3 nature matrix: new and selected essays by robert michael pyle, 4 terroir: love, out of place by natasha sajé, 5 maybe the people would be the times by luc sante.

W e’re talking about the books shortlisted for the 2021 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay . As an essayist yourself, or as a reader of essays, what are you looking for? What’s the key to a good essay ?

Let’s turn to the books that made the shortlist of the 2021 PEN Award for the Art of the Essay. The winning book was Had I Known: Collected Essays by Barbara Ehrenreich , whose books have been recommended a number of times on Five Books. Tell me more. 

One of the criteria for this particular prize is that it should be not just for a single book, but for a body of work. One of the things we wanted to honour about Barbara Ehrenreich is that she has produced a remarkable body of work. Although it’s offered in a more specifically political register than some essayists, or that a great many past prize winners have practised, the quiddity of her work is that it remains rooted in personal experience, in the act of bearing witness. She has a passionate political point to make, certainly, a series of them, many seeming all the more relevant now than when she began writing. Nonetheless, her writing still always depends on the intimacy of first-hand knowledge, what people in post-incarceration work call ‘lived experience’ (a term with a distinguished philosophical history). Her book Nickel and Dimed is the classic example of that. She never writes from a distance about working-class life in America. She bears witness to the nature and real texture of working-class life in America.

“One point of giving awards…is to keep passing the small torches of literary tradition”

Next up of the books on the 2021 PEN essay prize shortlist is Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader by Vivian Gornick.

Vivian Gornick is a writer who’s been around for a very long time. Although longevity is not in itself a criterion for excellence—or for this prize, or in the writing life generally—persistence and perseverance are. Writers who keep coming back at us, again and again, with a consistent vision, are surely to be saluted. For her admirers, her appetite to re-read things already read is one of the most attractive parts of her oeuvre , if I can call it that; her appetite not just to read but to read deeply and personally. One of the things that people who love her work love about it is that her readings are never academic, or touched by scholarly hobbyhorsing. They’re readings that involve the fullness of her experience, then applied to literature. Although she reads as a critic, she reads as an essayist reads, rather than as a reviewer reads. And I think that was one of the things that was there to honour in her body of work, as well.

Is she a novelist or journalist, as well?

Let’s move on to the next book which made the 2021 PEN essay shortlist. This is Nature Matrix: New and Selected Essays by Robert Michael Pyle.

I have a special reason for liking this book in particular, and that is that it corresponds to one of the richest and oldest of American genres, now often overlooked, and that’s the naturalist essay. You can track it back to Henry David Thoreau , if not to Ralph Waldo Emerson , this American engagement with nature , the wilderness, not from a narrowly scientific point of view, nor from a purely ecological or environmental point of view—though those things are part of it—but again, from the point of view of lived experience, of personal testimony.

Let’s look at the next book on the shortlist of the 2021 PEN Awards, which is Terroir: Love, Out of Place by Natasha Sajé. Why did these essays appeal?

One of the things that was appealing about this book is that’s it very much about, in every sense, the issues of the day: the idea of place, of where we are, how we are located on any map as individuals by ethnic identity, class, gender—all of those things. But rather than being carried forward in a narrowly argumentative way, again, in the classic manner of the essay, Sajé’s work is ruminative. It walks around these issues from the point of view of someone who’s an expatriate, someone who’s an émigré, someone who’s a world citizen, but who’s also concerned with the idea of ‘terroir’, the one place in the world where we belong. And I think the dialogue in her work between a kind of cosmopolitanism that she has along with her self-critical examination of the problem of localism and where we sit on the world, was inspiring to us.

Get the weekly Five Books newsletter

Last of the books on the shortlist for the 2021 Pen essay award is Maybe the People Would Be the Times by Luc Sante.

Again, here’s a writer who’s had a distinguished generalised career, writing about lots of places and about lots of subjects. In the past, he’s made his special preoccupation what he calls ‘low life’, but I think more broadly can be called the marginalized or the repressed and abject. He’s also written acute introductions to the literature of ‘low life’, the works of Asbury and David Maurer, for instance.

But I think one of the things that was appealing about what he’s done is the sheer range of his enterprise. He writes about countless subjects. He can write about A-sides and B-sides of popular records—singles—then go on to write about Jacques Rivette’s cinema. He writes from a kind of private inspection of public experience. He has a lovely piece about tabloid headlines and their evolution. And I think that omnivorous range of enthusiasms and passions is a stirring reminder in a time of specialization and compartmentalization of the essayist’s freedom to roam. If Pyle is in the tradition of Thoreau, I suspect Luc Sante would be proud to be put in the tradition of Baudelaire—the flaneur who walks the streets, sees everything, broods on it all and writes about it well.

One point of giving awards, with all their built-in absurdity and inevitable injustice, is to keep alive, or at least to keep passing, the small torches of literary tradition. And just as much as we’re honoring the great tradition of the naturalist essay in the one case, I think we’re honoring the tradition of the Baudelairean flaneur in this one.

April 18, 2021

Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. If you are the interviewee and would like to update your choice of books (or even just what you say about them) please email us at [email protected]

Support Five Books

Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you've enjoyed this interview, please support us by donating a small amount .

©Brigitte Lacombe

Adam Gopnik

Adam Gopnik has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 1986. His many books include A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism . He is a three time winner of the National Magazine Award for Essays & Criticism, and in 2021 was made a chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur by the French Republic.

We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview.

This site has an archive of more than one thousand seven hundred interviews, or eight thousand book recommendations. We publish at least two new interviews per week.

Five Books participates in the Amazon Associate program and earns money from qualifying purchases.

© Five Books 2024

• Literature & Fiction
• Essays & Correspondence

Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime Try Prime and start saving today with fast, free delivery

Amazon Prime includes:

Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.

• Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
• Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
• Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
• A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
• Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
• Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access

Important:  Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.

Buy new: .savingPriceOverride { color:#CC0C39!important; font-weight: 300!important; } .reinventMobileHeaderPrice { font-weight: 400; } #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPriceSavingsPercentageMargin, #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPricePriceToPayMargin { margin-right: 4px; } -34% $11.79 $ 11 . 79 FREE delivery Wednesday, June 12 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35 Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com

Return this item for free.

Free returns are available for the shipping address you chose. You can return the item for any reason in new and unused condition: no shipping charges

• Go to your orders and start the return
• Select your preferred free shipping option
• Drop off and leave!

Save with Used - Good .savingPriceOverride { color:#CC0C39!important; font-weight: 300!important; } .reinventMobileHeaderPrice { font-weight: 400; } #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPriceSavingsPercentageMargin, #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPricePriceToPayMargin { margin-right: 4px; } $2.02 $ 2 . 02 $3.99 delivery Tuesday, June 18 Ships from: Seattlegoodwill Sold by: Seattlegoodwill

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

The Best American Essays 2022 Paperback – November 1, 2022

Purchase options and add-ons.

A collection of the year’s best essays, selected by award-winning writer Alexander Chee.

Alexander Chee, an essayist of “virtuosity and power” ( Washington Post ), selects twenty essays out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.

• Print length 336 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Mariner Books
• Publication date November 1, 2022
• Dimensions 5.5 x 0.75 x 8 inches
• ISBN-10 035865887X
• ISBN-13 978-0358658870
• See all details

Frequently bought together

Similar items that may ship from close to you

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

“ New Yorker  writer Schulz ( Being Wrong ) collects essays that skillfully combine journalistic and literary sensibilities in this powerful addition to the annual anthology series… This is a moving retrospective of a singular year.” — Publishers Weekly on The Best American Essays 2021

“These essays challenge personal and political assumptions and show us life in all its complexities and contradictions. Which in this American moment, and in every other, matters.” — USA Today

“[A] thoughtful entry in the long-running series...The works in this year’s collection are a mix of the disconcerting, the probing, and the self-reflective, and well-suited to challenging times.” — Publishers Weekly

About the Author

ALEXANDER CHEE is the best-selling author of the novels The Queen of the Night and Edinburgh, and the essay collection How to Write an Autobiographical Novel . He is a contributing editor at the New Republic , and an editor at large at Virginia Quarterly Review . His work has appeared in The Best American Essays 2016 , the New York Times Magazine , the New York Times Book Review , the New Yorker , T Magazine,   Slate , Vulture , among others. He is winner of a 2003 Whiting Award, a 2004 NEA Fellowship in prose and a 2010 MCCA Fellowship, and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Civitella Ranieri and Amtrak. He is an associate professor of English at Dartmouth College.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mariner Books (November 1, 2022)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 035865887X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0358658870
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.1 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.75 x 8 inches
• #198 in American Fiction Anthologies
• #559 in Essays (Books)
• #1,552 in Writing Reference

About the author

Robert atwan.

Robert Atwan is the founder and series editor of the annual Best American Essays. The editor of numerous anthologies, he has written on the ancient literature of the Near East and his critical essays and poetry reviews have appeared in many national periodicals. Laurance Wieder is the author of several volumes of poetry, including The Coronet of Tours; No Harm Done; The Last Century: Selected Poems; and One Hundred Fifty Psalms, a complete psalter. He has taught Bible and Ancient Authors at Cornell University.

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Become an Amazon Hub Partner
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices