Product Description

Selected from a survey of more than 200 English professors, award-winning short-story writers, novelists, and fiction workshop directors, a remarkable collection of North American literature written since 1970.

Sherman Alexie • Margaret Atwood • Toni Cade Bambara • Russell Banks • John Barth • Donald Barthelme • Rick Bass • Richard Bausch • Charles Baxter • Madison Smartt Bell • Amy Bloom • Kate Braverman • Robert Olen Butler • Ethan Canin • Raymond Carver • Sandra Cisneros • Michael Cunningham • Junot Diaz • Stuart Dybek • Tony Earley • Louise Erdrich • Richard Ford • David Gates • Tim Gautreaux • Ron Hansen • Amy Hempel • Denis Johnson • Edward P. Jones • Thom Jones • David Michael Kaplan • Janet Kaufman • Jamaica Kincaid • David Leavitt • Reginald McKnight • Lorrie Moore • Bharati Mukherjee • Alice Munro • Joyce Carol Oates • Tim O'Brien • Cynthia Ozick • Annie Proulx • Mark Richard • Lee Smith • Susan Sontag • Amy Tan • Melanie Rae Thon • Stephanie Vaughn • Alice Walker • John Edgar Wideman • Joy Williams ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Excellent collection of contemporary American short stories
I have much enjoyed reading this 50 stories. Most of them are just superbly written.
Some deal with interesting issues and others just employ a novel writing style. Some do both at the same time in a couple of pages.
Even if you do not like one or two stories, you are more than rewarded by others.
And then, this collection is a good introduction to several great contemporary American writers that otherwise one would not be aware of their existence.
A pleasure to read and a recommended one.

A depressing collection
I had to read a bunch of stories out of this book for a college course.Most of the stories are super depressing.I guess that reflects on American society, but I can only take so much.It's like watching the news, but more literary.

This is a Terrific Collection
For years I have been buying _Best American Short Stories_ and have oftened wondered how some of the stories have earned their spots in the book. Finally, I bought this _Scribner's_ collection and have a collection that is worth reading. Althought I don't like every story in the book, I'm finding that about two-thirds of them are truly excellent. Someday when I teach creative writing again, I will use this collection as a textbook. The real benefit that this book provides is the opportunity to read some of the best stories of recent years by some of the best-known writers of our time. It's a cream-of-the-crop experience. P.S. I bought it for five bucks from the bargain shelf at Borders.

Buy it for all your writer friends!
I was asked to read this book for a course on teaching creative writing. This is the book for teachers who believe students can learn to write quality literature by reading quality literature. Moreover, for teachers who read closely, each story can teach a lesson. Once these techniques have been discussed and discovered, students/writers can try them for themselves. The students are "learning to dissect without murdering."

Even if you're not teaching, though, this is an amazing collection of stories. And it's a bargain!

Amazing.
It's difficult to review a book with fifthy authors and their short stories. But I can tell you this: I read a lot of anthologies and usualy only a few stories are really good. In this Scribner Anthology however every single story is outstanding and to me that's extraordinary. Let me give you the list of the authors and their stories:
Alexie, Sherman:
This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona.
Atwood, Margaret: Death by Landscape
Bambara, Toni Cade: Raymond's Run.
Banks, Russell: Sarah Cole:A Type of Love Story.
Barth, John: Click.
Barthelme, Donald: The School
Bass, Rick: Wild Horses
Bausch, Richard: The Man Who Knew Belle Starr.
Baxter, Charles: Gryphon.
Bell, Madison Smartt: Customs of the Country.
Bloom, Amy: Silver Water.
Braverman, Kate: Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta
Butler, Robert Olen: A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
Canin, Ethan: The Year of Getting to Know Us.
Carver, Raymond: Errand.
Cisneros, Sandra: Woman Hollering Creek
Cunningham, Michael: White Angel.
Diaz, Junot: Fiesta 1980.
Dybek, Stuart: Pet Milk.
Earley,Tony: The Prophet from Jupiter
Erdrich, Louise: Saint Marie.
Ford, Richard: Rock Springs.
Gates, David: The Mail Lady.
Gautreaux, Tim: Same Place, Same Things.
Hansen, Ron: Nebraska.
Hempel, Amy: In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried.
Johnson, Denis: Emergency.
Jones, Edward P.: Marie.
Jones, Thom: Cold Snap
Kaplan, David Michael: Doe Season.
Kauffman, Janet: Patriotic.
Kincaid, Jamaica: Girl.
Leavitt, David: Territory.
McKnight, Reginald: The Kind of Light That Shines on Texas.
Moore, Lorrie: You're Ugly, Too.
Mukherjee, Bharati: The Management of Grief
Munro, Alice: Meneseteung.
Oates, Joyce Carol: Ghost Girls
O'Brien, Tim: The Things They Carried.
Ozick, Cynthia: The Shawl.
Proulx, Annie: Brokeback Mountain
Richard, Mark: Strays.
Smith, Lee: Intensive Care.
Sontag, Susan: The Way We Live Now
Tan Amy: Two Kinds.
Thon, Melanie Rae: First, Body.
Vaughn, Stephanie: Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog.
Walker, Alice: Nineteen Fifty-Five.
Wideman, John Edgar: Fever.
Williams, Joy: Taking Care.
... Read more

Product Description
John Updike has selected enduring stories from the eighty-four annual volumes of THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES, and the result is "a spectacular tapestry of fictional achievement" (Entertainment Weekly). Available for the first time on compact disc, this extraordinary collection features a wide variety of contemporary writers reading classics of the genre, along with authors reading from their own work. Containing twenty-two unabridged stories in all, the expanded audio edition includes a new story from THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 1999 to round out the century.Amazon.com Review
At age 67, the perennially youthful John Updike may at last qualify assomething of an elder statesman. But the Best American Short Storiesannual--whose greatest hits package Updike has now assembled--is almost ageneration older, having commenced publication in 1915. This staying powerallows the hefty Best American Short Stories of the Century toperform double duty. It is, on the one hand, a priceless compendium ofAmerican manners and morals--a decade-by-decade survey of how we livedthen, and how we live now. Yet Updike very consciously avoided thesociological angle in making his selection. "I tried not to select storiesbecause they illustrated a theme or portion of the national experience," hewrites in his introduction, "but because they struck me as lively,beautiful, believable, and, in the human news they brought, important." Inthis he succeeded: the 55 fictions that made the grade are most notable fortheir human (rather than merely historical) interest.

So who got in? There are a good number of cut-and-dried classics here,including Hemingway's "The Killers," Faulkner's "That Evening Sun Go Down,"and Philip Roth's acidic spin on religious connivance, "Defender of theFaith." In other cases, major authors are represented by relatively minorworks. Yet it's hard to quibble with the inclusion of Willa Cather, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Tennessee Williams, J.F. Powers, EudoraWelty--particularly when you take into account that their second-tiercreations are fully the equal of anybody else's masterpieces. And the finalthird of the book really does constitute an honor roll of contemporaryAmerican fiction, with brilliant entries by Saul Bellow, Donald Barthelme,Raymond Carver, Tim O'Brien, Bernard Malamud, Cynthia Ozick, John Cheever,and Vladimir Nabokov. (For the latter, Updike actually succumbed to his ownidolatry and bent the rules for admission--but nobody who reads thehallucinatory "That in Aleppo Once..." will regret it.) It goes withoutsaying that fiction fans will be complaining about the editor's sins ofomission well into the next century. But no matter how you slice it,this remains an elegant and essential advertisement for the short form.--James Marcus ... Read more

Customer Reviews (49)

Best American short stories
This book have good short stories, good size of the letter, but the size of the book is to big, so you can not carry in your wallet. But it is not uncomfortable to read.

Best American Short Stories of the Century
Good stories.Best selection of authors in any collection of short stories I've yet seen.

An Outstanding Compilation
This is an excellent collection of American short stories.(Even the quality of the book itself - cover, pages, printing - is excellent.)

I purchased a used book via Amazon from Hilltop Book Shop.What a pleasure.They delivered the book very quickly, shrink wrapped and carefully packed.It was described as in "very good condition" but it looks new to me.

Surprisingly Poor
First, let me say that I'm a hard person to displease when it comes to literature.I'm well-read and appreciate a broad range of genres, and I'm an easygoing guy in general.

I tried to listen to the audiobook version of this, and about halfway through I just couldn't stand it anymore.The stories are...mechanically well-written, I suppose.But they're all incredibly dull, and I kept thinking, "Was the person that picked them suicidal?"They're mostly about failed love affairs, failed lives, suicide...I understand there's good stories in tragedy, but I refuse to believe that tragedy is the *only* "best work" America's produced in a century.And our great tragedies might at least be *interesting*.

Also, the audio version has the worst readers possible...uninspired voices, weird accents...they put me to sleep, or jangled at my nerves.Especially the lady with the harsh southern twang.And Updike himself sounds like he's reading from cue cards, and badly at that.

Overall, a terrible compilation.

John Updike's Usual Savviness
It truly is a 20th century history of the best in American short story writing. ... Read more