Not the best volume of this series I buy without miss every year, not the worst either but on the weaker side. Too much of Franzen's prissy tastes on display here, essays that are hard to read for no good reason and others that pronounce and bloviate their way through a story instead of tell it. In the plus column, a number of essays by writers who work non-academic day jobs (a border agent, a doctor, a sexologist). Do not miss any of those. And Sebastian Junger's piece about PTSD as well as the essay entitled "How They Kill in the Movies" about lynching are both platinum hits.