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| The Best American Essays 2008 (The Best American Series) | 
 enlarge | Creators: Robert Atwan, Adam Gopnik
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $8.07
You Save: $5.93 (42%)
New (47) Used (13) from $6.75
Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 10276
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 1
ISBN: 0618983228
Dewey Decimal Number: 814.008
EAN: 9780618983223
ASIN: 0618983228
Publication Date: October 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: NEW: NEVER READ...!!!!.(may have faint shelf wear from bookstore)..ALL ORDERS SHIP SAME OR NEXT BUSINESS DAY, FREE POSTAL DELIVERY CONFIRMATION FOR U.S. ORDERS, TOP CUSTOMER SERVICE !!!!
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Product Description
Here you will find the finest essays "judiciously selected from countless publications" (Chicago Tribune), ranging from The New Yorker and Harper's to Swink and Pinch. In his introduction to this year's edition, Adam Gopnik finds that great essays have "text and inner text, personal story and larger point, the thing you're supposed to be paying attention to and some other thing you're really interested in."
David Sedaris's quirky, hilarious account of a childhood spent yearning for a home where history was properly respected is also a poignant rumination on surviving the passage of time. In "The Ecstasy of Influence," Jonathan Lethem ponders the intriguing phenomenon of cryptomnesia: a person believes herself to be creating something new but is really recalling similar, previously encountered work. Ariel Levy writes in "The Lesbian Bride's Handbook" of her efforts to plan a party that accurately reflects her lifestyle (which she notes is "not black-tie!") as she confronts head-on what it means to be married. And Lauren Slater is off to "Tripp Lake," recounting the one summer she spent at camp?a summer of color wars, horseback riding, and the "wild sadness" that settled in her when she was away from home.
In the end, Gopnik believes that the only real ambition of an essayist is to be a master of our common life. This latest installment of The Best American Essays is full of writing that reveals, in Gopnik's words, "the breath of things as they are."
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| Customer Reviews:
Not the best in this series October 9, 2008
9 out of 14 found this review helpful
The Best American Essays series usually provides funny, insightful, poignant, incisive, (or all of the above) reading suitable for snatching on the bus or on a lazy afternoon. Although there are usually a few duds, the batting average is quite high. However, past Jonathan Lethem's polemic on plagiarism and a few others, I found this edition basically unreadable. I doubt it was really "a bad year for essays" so the selection had to be subpar.
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