Robert Atwan, ser. ed., The Best American Essays 2004, edited and with an Introduction by Louis Menard (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004) ("From Susan Orlean, "Lifelike"(originally from The New Yorker, 2003): "That there a taxidermy championship at all is something of an astonishment, not only to the people in the world who have no use for a Dan-D-Noser and Soft Touch Duck Degreaser but also to taxidermists themselves." Id. at 203, 204.).
Nicholson Baker, The Way the World Works: Essays (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012) (I especially recommend the twenty-one essays grouped under three headings: "Reading," "Libraries and Newspapers," and "Technology.").
Jesmyn Ward, ed., The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race (New York: Scribner, 2016) (From Isabel Wilkerson, "Where Do We Go from Here?": "And now police assaults on black people for the most ordinary human behaviors--a father tasered in Minnesota while waiting for his children; a motorist shot to death in North Carolina while seeking help after a car accident. It is as if we have reentered the past and are living in a second Nadir: It seems the rate of police killings now surpasses the rate of lynchings during the worst decades of the Jim Crow era. There was a lynching every four days in the early decades of the twentieth century. It's been estimated that an African American is now killed by police every two to three days." Id. at 59, 60-61.).
