This collection has the great novelists of the last century: Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Roth, Updike (a minor great) and the celebrated short stories writers O'Connor, Barthleme, Baldwin, Paley, Carver, and Cheever. I can do without Joyce Carol Oats.

However, the two best short stories were, partially because I've read the above authors before, Sherwood Anderson's Brothers and Lauren Groff's At the Rounds Earth's Imagined Corners. Anderson has a way of breathing life and perspective into his story while keeping it simple. I was just reading about snakes, and I appreciated how Groff was able to cover three generations in such a short amount of space.