The Best American Essays 1999

Book Overview

This year's wonderfully diverse collection features such respected writers as Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, Ian Frazier, Mary Gordon, and Arthur Miller. The essays range widely across the American... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0395860555
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Length: 297 Pages
• Weight: 0.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.8" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

Another solid edition

Edward Hoagland has done a wonderful job in selecting a breadthof essays that radiate his and others various interests. The 1999essays takes us from the horrors of sexual abuse to the significance of Job to the beauty of "bogs." I particularly enjoyed David Quammen's "Planet of Weeds," an essay so compelling and upsetting that I sat shell-shocked after reading it. As usual, Ian Frazier impresses, and I particulary enjoyed Toure's "What's Inside You Brother?" My only disappointment is that the work doesn't have an essay from Hoagland; his modesty prevails.

Overlooked excellence

This is full of many great essays, all of them overlooked bits of excellent writing. My favorite is HITLER'S COUCH. Personal, historical, insightful, a prose poem about the tragic hellishness of this century and how it relates to the individual, without any self impressed "brilliance."