"The Essay is a particularly nimble form for collapsing and expanding our human perception of time, and allowing us to contemplate private and public histories."
"Speculation, a chief characteristic of the essay, compresses past and future into a parallel dimension where the imagination of a here-and-now narrator wonders how to story may have turned out had something been said (or not) or done (or not)"
"This volume, the 40th in the series, preserves the history unfurling in the liminal zone between democracy and tyranny."
"The essay as we think of it was born in the minds of the ancients, influenced by Montaigne's sixteenth-century examination of the self, and further shaped by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British authors, but the form seems peculiarly suited to American writers."
"... it is also a miscellaneous artifact composed of ephemeral thought tempered with emotion."
"The Best American Essays features a selection of essays published in North American periodicals (or by North American writers in foreign English-language publications) each calendar year."
"These essays are works of literary achievement that show a keen awareness of craft and originality and forcefulness of thought."