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| Creators: David Foster Wallace, Robert Atwan
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $2.74
You Save: $11.26 (80%)
New (44) Used (51) from $0.91
Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 8615
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 1
ISBN: 0618709274
Dewey Decimal Number: 814.008
EAN: 9780618709274
ASIN: 0618709274
Publication Date: October 29, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 6-7 of 7 | | « PREV | | |
 Collection for 2007 Is Worthy of Its "Best" Title November 17, 2007
22 out of 25 found this review helpful
The diverse collection of 22 essays address some of the most urgent issues we're facing today. Here are some highlights:
"A Carnivore's Credo" by Roger Scruton: He writes a unique defense of meat-eating and rebukes vegetarianism.
"What Should a Billionaire Give--and What Should You?" by Peter Singer. He presents what many will find to be an extreme view of charity.
"Dragon Slayers"by Jarald Walker. The author, an African American, refutes a definition of embattled victimization as too limiting to African Americans.
"Apocalypse Now" by Edward O. Wilson. Wilson's attempt to bridge the gulf between science and religion in a "letter" to Baptists challenges the practices of both the scientific and religious community.
"An Orgy of Power" by George Gessert. The author shows the disturbing use of torture in US policy as being out of bounds historically.
"Loaded" by Garret Keizer. A "progressive" defense of gun ownership rooted in a Hobbesian worldview lays out the gun debate in a way I've never seen.
"What the Dog Saw" by Malcolm Gladwell. The author profiles "dog whisperer"and shows that many American dog owners unwittingly harm their dogs when they treat their pets like humans.
"Petrified" by John Lahr. He shows the curse of stage-fright and self-consciousness and why there is a moral imperative to overcome these afflictions.
"Onward, Christian Liberals" by Marilynne Robinson. The author rebukes "fundamentalism" by arguing that it is a betrayal of real Christianity.
Great November 9, 2007
21 out of 25 found this review helpful
After reading Best American Non-Required Reading 2007 and being disappointed, I was reluctant to buy Best American Essays 2007. I am happy to report that I wasn't disappointed with this book. What a difference great editing makes!
The essays in this book are daring. "Afternoon of the Sex Children" reprinted from N+1 was very good. I am suprised that anyone has the courage to put sex and children in the same sentence much less explore Nabakov's themes in the age of Britney Spears grinding in pigtails and "no sex education in schools". It's been refreshing to read essays that don't go over the same tired themes that magazines repeatedly explore. When this book did reprint essays that explored some unoriginal people or themes, they were the best essays on those subjects I'd read. For example, I didn't think I would want to read another essay on Cesar The Dog Whisperer because I 've read something about this guy everywhere and I was disappointed to see this book include another story about him. But "What The Dog Saw" was so well written I begged my husband to read it so that we could discuss it.
This is a good collection of essays. I took off one star because I felt there were too many short stories in a collection that should have been devoted to essays. Not that the short stories weren't good. The collection opens with a short "Malcolm" which was one of my favourite pieces in the book. A good argument is made by David Foster Wallace that these are narratives and therefore eligible for inclusion. But these contributions read and felt like short stories to me and I really wanted essays as there is another book in this series devoted to short stories.
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