very very good selection ( )

Loving it so far. Christopher Hitchens's introduction is more humane than you might think, coming from this prickly atheist.

Hitchens selections are a little on the esoteric side. Example: an essay on Einstein's first trip to America sounds interesting, but it turned out to be heavy on details about the inner conflicts of America's post-war Zionist movement.
The David Foster Wallace collection from a few years ago is still the one to beat. ( )

The Best American Essays 2010 is a collection of articles first published in magazines during 2009. This is my 5th in the series and I found it average with a couple pieces worth marking for later re-reading, and the discovery of one author I'd like to read more of.

The four pieces I enjoyed most were "The Murder of Leo Tolstoy" by Elif Batuman (Harper's) mainly for the hillarious writing in which he shows up for a conference in Russia with missing luggage and walks around for a week in the same grungy track suit. The bus stop bathroom break is classic. I suspect this piece is an excerpt from his book The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them. "Me, Myself, and I" by Jane Kramer (New Yorker) is a biographical piece on Michel de Montaigne who is of course the inventor of the "essay" genre. Lots of good quotes from his work. The best piece by far is Matt Labash's "A Rake's Progress" (Weekley Standard) about D.C. Mayor Marion Barry - very well written, funny and interesting, Labash attached himself to Barry for a few weeks and followed him around in his post-politics life in Washington. Barry is endlessly fascinating for his contrasting brilliance and total self-destruction without remorse. Labash is the perfect iconoclastic author for Barry, and my new favorite. Finally, Ron Rindo's "Gyromany" (Gettysburg Review) is a first-person account of what it's like to have severe vertigo, a condition comparable to severe chronic pain. There is a new theory that vertigo was the condition that drove van Gogh mad, and which explains the twirly nature of his paintings like in "The Starry Night". Ah hah! ( )

A really pleasing start to the year, these fast-paced, interesting, varied essays provided the perfect summer reading. Topics range from Orwell to gyromancy and Van Gogh's potential ear disease to a rumination on whether Tolstoy was in fact murdered. Christopher Hitchens provides an interesting selection which has really got my keen on reading more such collections. ( )