This year's selections have been chosen from among the finalists of the National Magazine Awards. Includes articles from "The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine," and "Esquire."

Chosen from among the winners and finalists of the 2009 National Magazine Awards, this collection features a mixture of reviews, profiles, and reporting that caught both readers' and critics' attention.

Showcases articles written by a variety of journalists judged as finalists or winners in a contest sponsored by the American Society of Magazine Editors, and addresses topics ranging from reporting to feature writing.

Our annual anthology of finalists and winners of the National Magazine Awards 2014 includes Max Chafkin's oral history of Apple from Fast Company, Joshua Davis's intimate portrait of tech pioneer John McAfee's personal and public breakdown from Wired; Kyle Dickman's haunting investigation into the preventable death of nineteen firemen battling an Arizona wildfire; and Ariel Levy's emotional account of extreme travel to a remote land—while pregnant—from The New Yorker. Other essays include Wright Thompson's bittersweet profile of Michael Jordan's fifty-something second act (ESPN the Magazine); Jean M. Twenge's revealing look at fertility myths and baby politics (The Atlantic); Janet Reitman's controversial study of the Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (Rolling Stone); Luke Mogelson's harrowing experience accompanying asylum seekers on a potentially deadly sea voyage to Australia (New York Times Magazine); Lisa Miller's poignant report from Newtown, Connecticut, as the town tries to cope with the aftermath of one of the nation's worst mass shootings (New York); Emily Nussbaum's critiques of gender and politics on television (The New Yorker); and Witold Rybczynski's poetic engagement with modern architecture (Architect). The collection concludes with the award-winning poem "Elegies" by Kathleen Ossip (Poetry) and "The Embassy of Cambodia," a short story by Zadie Smith (The New Yorker).

This year's Best American Magazine Writing features outstanding writing on contentious issues including incarceration, policing, sexual assault, labor, technology, and environmental catastrophe. Selections include Paul Ford's ambitious "What Is Code?" (Bloomberg Businessweek), an innovative explanation of how programming works, and "The Really Big One," by Kathryn Schulz (The New Yorker), which exposes just how unprepared the Pacific Northwest is for a major earthquake. Joining them are Meaghan Winter's exposé of crisis pregnancy centers (Cosmopolitan) and a chilling story of police prejudice that allowed a serial rapist to run free (the Marshall Project in partnership with ProPublica). Also included is Shane Smith's interview with Barack Obama about mass incarceration (Vice). Other selections demonstrate a range of long-form styles and topics across print and digital publications. The imprisoned hacker and activist Barrett Brown pens hilarious dispatches from behind bars, including a scathing review of Jonathan Franzen's fiction (The Intercept). "The New American Slavery" (Buzzfeed) documents the pervasive exploitation of guest workers, and Luke Mogelson explores the purgatorial fate of an undocumented man sent back to Honduras (New York Times Magazine). Joshua Hammer harrowingly portrays Sierra Leone's worst Ebola ward as even the staff succumb to the disease (Matter). And in "The Friend," Matthew Teague's wife is afflicted with cancer, his friend moves in, and the result is a devastating narrative of relationships and death (Esquire). The collection concludes with Jenny Zhang's "How It Feels," an unconventional meditation on the intersection of teenage cruelty and art (Poetry).

Chosen by the American Society of Magazine Editors, the stories in this anthology include National Magazine Award–winning works of public interest, reporting, feature writing, and fiction. This year's selections include Pamela Colloff (Texas Monthly) on the agonizing, decades-long struggle by a convicted murderer to prove his innocence; Dexter Filkins (The New Yorker) on the emotional effort by an Iraq War veteran to make amends for the role he played in the deaths of innocent Iraqis; Chris Jones (Esquire) on Robert A. Caro's epic, ongoing investigation into the life and work of Lyndon Johnson; Charles C. Mann (Orion) on the odds of human beings' survival as a species; and Roger Angell (The New Yorker) on aging, dying, and loss. The former infantryman Brian Mockenhaupt (Byliner) describes modern combat in Afghanistan and its ability both to forge and challenge friendships; Ta-Nehisi Coates (The Atlantic) reflects on the complex racial terrain traversed by Barack Obama; Frank Rich (New York) assesses Mitt Romney's ambiguous candidacy; and Dahlia Lithwick (Slate) looks at the current and future implications of an eventful year in Supreme Court history. The volume also includes an interview on the art of screenwriting with Terry Southern from The Paris Review and an award-winning short story by Stephen King published in Harper's magazine.

Chosen from the nominees and winners of the 2012 National Magazine Awards, this year's anthology covers a range of developments in culture, commerce, society, and politics, from the passing of Steve Jobs to the controversy over breast cancer research funding.

This year's Best American Magazine Writing features articles on politics, culture, sports, sex, race, celebrity, and more. Selections include Ta-Nehisi Coates's intensely debated "The Case For Reparations" (The Atlantic) and Monica Lewinsky's reflections on the public-humiliation complex and how the rules of the game have (and have not) changed (Vanity Fair). Amanda Hess recounts her chilling encounter with Internet sexual harassment (Pacific Standard) and John Jeremiah Sullivan shares his investigation into one of American music's greatest mysteries (New York Times Magazine). The anthology also presents Rebecca Traister's acerbic musings on gender politics (The New Republic) and Jerry Saltz's fearless art criticism (New York). James Verini reconstructs an eccentric love affair against the slow deterioration of Afghanistan in the twentieth century (The Atavist); Roger Angell offers affecting yet humorous reflections on life at ninety-three (The New Yorker); Tiffany Stanley recounts her poignant experience caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's (National Journal); and Jonathan Van Meter takes an entertaining look at fashion's obsession with being a social-media somebody (Vogue). Brian Phillips describes his surreal adventures in the world of Japanese ritual and culture (Grantland), and Emily Yoffe reveals the unforeseen casualties in the effort to address the college rape crisis (Slate). The collection concludes with a work of fiction by Donald Antrim, exploring the geography of loss. (The New Yorker).

With the work of reporters under fire worldwide, this year’s anthology of National Magazine Award finalists and winners is a timely reminder of the power of journalism. The pieces included here explore the fault lines in American society. Shane Bauer’s visceral “My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard” (Mother Jones) and Sarah Stillman’s depiction of the havoc wreaked on young people’s lives when they are put on sex-offender registries (The New Yorker) examine controversial criminal-justice practices. And responses to the shocks of the recent election include Matt Taibbi’s irreverent dispatches from the campaign trail (Rolling Stone), George Saunders’s transfixing account of Trump’s rallies (The New Yorker), and Andrew Sullivan’s fears for the future of democracy (New York). In other considerations of the political scene, Jeffrey Goldberg talks through Obama’s foreign-policy legacy with the former president (The Atlantic), and Gabriel Sherman analyzes how Roger Ailes’s fall sheds light on conservative media (New York). Linking personal stories to the course of history, Nikole Hannah-Jones looks for a school for her daughter in a rapidly changing, racially divided Brooklyn (New York Times Magazine), and Pamela Colloff explores how the 1966 University of Texas Tower mass shooting changed the course of one survivor’s life (Texas Monthly). A selection of Rebecca Solnit’s Harper’s commentary ranges from a writer on death row to the isolation at the heart of conservatism. Becca Rothfeld ponders women waiting on love from the Odyssey to Tinder (Hedgehog Review). Siddhartha Mukherjee depicts the art and agony of oncology (New York Times Magazine). David Quammen ventures to Yellowstone to consider the future of wild places (National Geographic), and Mac McClelland follows a deranged expedition to Cuba in search of the ivory-billed woodpecker (Audubon). The collection concludes with Zandria Robinson’s eloquent portrait of her father as reflected in the music he loved (Oxford American).

The Best American Magazine Writing 2022 presents a range of outstanding writing on timely topics, from in-depth reporting to incisive criticism: Kristin Canning calls for a change in how we talk about abortion (Women’s Health), and Ed Yong warns us about the next pandemic (The Atlantic). Matthieu Aikins provides a gripping eyewitness account of the Taliban’s seizure of Kabul (New York Times Magazine). Heidi Blake and Katie J. M. Baker’s “Beyond Britney” examines how people placed under legal guardianship are deprived of their autonomy (BuzzFeed News). Rachel Aviv profiles a psychologist who studies the fallibility of memory—and has testified for defendants including Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby (The New Yorker). The anthology includes dispatches from the frontiers of science, exploring why Venus turned out so hellishly unlike Earth (Popular Science) and detailing the potential of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (Quanta). It features celebrated writers, including Harper’s magazine pieces by Ann Patchett, whose “These Precious Days” is a powerful story of friendship during the pandemic, and Vivian Gornick, who offers “notes on humiliation.” Carina del Valle Schorske depicts the power of public dance after pandemic isolation (New York Times Magazine). And the NBA icon Kareem Abdul-Jabbar lauds the Black athletes who fought for social justice (AARP the Magazine). Amid the continuing reckoning with racism, authors reconsider tarnished figures. The Black ornithologist and birder J. Drew Lanham assesses the legacy of John James Audubon in the magazine that bears his name, and Jeremy Atherton Lin questions his youthful enthusiasm for Morrissey (Yale Review). Jennifer Senior writes about memory and the lingering grief felt for a friend killed on 9/11 (The Atlantic). The collection concludes with Nishanth Injam’s story of queer first love across religious boundaries, “Come with Me” (Georgia Review).