"The essays in this volume are powerful, plainspoken meditations on birthing, dying, and all the business in between," writes Lauren Slater in her introduction to the 2006 edition. "They reflect the best of what we, as a singular species, have to offer, which is reflection in a context of kindness. The essays tell hard-won tales wrestled sometimes from great pain."

The twenty powerful essays in this volume are culled from periodicals ranging from The Sun to The New Yorker, from Crab Orchard Review to Vanity Fair. In "Missing Bellow," Scott Turow reflects on the death of an author he never met, but one who "overpowered me in a way no other writer had." Adam Gopnik confronts a different kind of death, that of his five-year-old daughter's pet fish — a demise that churns up nothing less than "the problem of consciousness and the plotline of Hitchock's Vertigo."

A pet is center stage as well in Susan Orlean's witty and compassionate saga of a successful hunt for a stolen border collie. Poe Ballantine chronicles a raw-nerved pilgrimage in search of salvation, solace, and a pretty brunette, and Laurie Abraham, in "Kinsey and Me," journeys after the man who dared to plumb the mysteries of human desire. Marjorie Williams gives a harrowing yet luminous account of her life with cancer, and Michele Morano muses on the grammar of the subjunctive mood while proving that "in language, as in life, moods are complicated, but at least in language there are only two."

Edited by the bestselling writer Lauren Slater, this year's "Best American Essays" highlights provocative, lively writing from many of our brightest literary lights. Contributors include Adam Gopnik, Scott Turow, Marjorie Williams, Poe Ballantine, and others.

Foreword by Robert Atwan ix

Introduction by Lauren Slater xv

Laurie Abraham. Kinsey and Me 1

from Elle

Poe Ballantine. 501 Minutes to Christ 11

from The Sun

Emily Bernard. Teaching the N-Word 25

from The American Scholar

Ken Chen. City Out of Breath 43

from MÁnoa

Toi Derricotte. Beginning Dialogues 48

from Creative Nonfiction

Joseph Epstein. The Culture of Celebrity 54

from The Weekly Standard

Eugene Goodheart. Whistling in the Dark 70

from The Sewanee Review

Adam Gopnik. Death of a Fish 85

from The New Yorker

Kim Dana Kupperman. Relief 96

from Hotel Amerika

Michele Morano. Grammar Lessons: The Subjunctive Mood 107

from Crab Orchard Review

Susan Orlean. Lost Dog 122

from The New Yorker

Sam Pickering. George 133

from Southwest Review

Robert Polito. Shame 153

from Black Clock

David Rieff. Illness as More Than Metaphor 159

from The New York Times Magazine

Oliver Sacks. Recalled to Life 172

from The New Yorker

Peter Selgin. Confessions of a Left-Handed Man 185

from The Literary Review

Alan Shapiro. Why Write? 197

from The Cincinnati Review

Lily Tuck. Group Grief 208

from The Hudson Review

Scott Turow. Missing Bellow 225

from The Atlantic Monthly

Marjorie Williams. A Matter of Life and Death 238

from Vanity Fair

Biographical Notes 265

Notable Essays of 2005 270