The Best American Nonrequired Reading

Some highlights of this collection are:Higher Education, the profile of Reese Perry, an African American high school basketball coach who shows up in an all-white midwest small town and, through his altruistic love, transforms them from prejudiced tribalists to open-minded cosmopolitans, a heart-breaking essay.Bomb Scare, a graphic or comic book style story of a high school where all the kids and their parents lack a moral compass and surrender to nihilism, the inability to transcend their self-centeredness. Why McDonald's French Fries Taste So Good, an excerpt from Fast Food Nation, which explains how the food industry uses sinister science to secretly make us addicted to the chemicals the food companies put in our food.Stop That Girl, a short story about a ten-year-old girl whose mother marries a rich man and ends up in a False Eden where playing house leaves her feeling abandoned and unloved.My Fake Job, an essay in which Rodney Rothman simply walks into a tech office and feigns being an employee, an act of charlatinism that isn't questioned by anyone at the office, casting light on how these fly-by-night business operations are so disjointed and full of isolated employees who suffer so much transience and alienation as the employers don't commit to them in the slightest.Toil and Temptation, an essay about a Mexican immigrant who slowly gets caught up in consumerism and becomes more of a slave in America than he ever was in Mexico.

This was a fascinating collection. Most of the "Best American" collections are straight forward. You have a good idea of what you're going to get, and if you are widely read in those subjects (sports writing, science writing, short stories, etc), you may have come across most of those essays/stories. In this first collection of Non-required reading, you get the best stories and essays that would never be assigned in school and are from alternative magazines (rather than the large respected newspapers like the New York Times). The pieces collected very from short fiction, to political essays, to a graphic story (as in a story told in comic panels), to humor. It is a varied collection and most of the work is top-notch (I was less impressed with "Hubcap Diamondstar Halo"). Some highlights are "Speed Demons", "Journal of a new COBRA recruit" (yes, COBRA as in from G.I. Joe....this may be my favorite of the collection), "My Fake Job", "Fourth Angry Mouse", "Why McDonald's Fries Taste So Good", the two short pieces from the Onion, "Higher Education", and "Bomb Scare" (Bomb Scare is the graphic story). Just browsing through the table of contents, I was able to list 9 pieces that I would highlight and recommend. If there was nothing else in the collection, that would be enough to recommend it. But, there are other quality pieces in this collection. If you want to read short pieces (both fiction and nonfiction) that you might not ordinarily run across every day, this is the collection for you.

Editor Dave Eggers explains that this inaugural edition of THE BEST AMERICAN NONREQUIRED READING 2002 is targeted for 15 to 25-year-olds. However, I can testify that individuals outside this predetermined age bracket can also gain enjoyment from this book. The wide variety of stories ranging from fiction to nonfiction satisfied me and kept me turning the pages. I enjoyed a great majority of the stories and only disliked two (which is rather remarkable considering that short story compilations seem to contain an equal share of winners and losers, in my own opinion.)The journalistic entries were phenomenal and shed light on current events such as methamphetamine addiction in Asia, undocumented Mexican laborers in NYC, and Afghanistan soldiers fighting their civil war. Some of the comical pieces made me laugh out laugh such as "The Fourth Angry Mouse" and "My Fake Job" and The Onion entries were also notable (I'm already a fan of that publication.)Sure, there were some stories intended for a 15 to 25-year-old audience but I could still relate even though it's been a decade since graduating high school. Who can forget what it's like during those delicate years? Overall, I very much enjoyed this book and will be looking forward to the 2003 edition.

I tend to shy away from compilations, but this one, with its quirky cover art and selections from several of my favorite authors, got my attention, kept me interested and kept me laughing all the way through it."Bomb Scare," the comic book included inside alongside essays on McDonald's fries, the Onion article on Marilyn Manson, showed me that this was worthy of purchase. It's up there with the work of Daniel Clowes.But the true gem, to me, was the COBRA-centered journal. Immediately, the book brought me back to the days of playing with my GI Joes and reminded me that, even then when I was 11, I wondered how on earth you could fund your own private army to do battle with a United States elite force. In addition, the journal explains why members of COBRA Command never knew how to shoot a gun and why they all wore masks. It was excellent.Thanks, Dave Eggers. And go Joe!

As a English, Philosophy, and Physics major at Boston College of the selected demographic for The Best American Non-Required Reading (I'm under 25)--I've found the material in the book highly pertinent to me. I would recommend this book for anyone who enjoyed Dave Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. From Eggers's introduction beginning with a short story excerpted from his latest, You Shall Know Our Velocity, about late-night skinny dipping in pools across town, to the final innovative short story "Please Don't Kill the Freshman" by Zoe Trope, this truly is the best American non-required reading. This book features a stunning range of subject and focus from the powerfully informative "Naji's Taliban Phase" from The New York Times Magazine to "Local Hipster Overexplaining Why He Was at the Mall" from The Onion, which, by the way, reminded me of some of my old friends from high school. Continuing with this humor, "'Jiving' with Your Teen" is probably one of the funniest things I've ever read, and I'm sure that it would appeal to older people too. I showed my friend who was interested in this book, "My Fake Job," based on a true story about the capriciousness of the dot-com era, in which a man occupies a cubicle at this downsizing dot-com company he pretendingly, but didn't actually work at, and my friend would not put the book down. But the book does have many serious stories and articles such as "Snacks" about dealing with weight and body image, and "The Lost Boys" and "Toil and Temptation" about the troubles of immigration to the US and finding good work, for Sudanese refugees and impoverished Mexicans, respectively. The compilation does have a couple weak points, such as with the "Journal of a New COBRA Recruit," which is supposed to be funny in it's parody of the senselessness of military service, but ends up going on a bit too long with the same joke and being a bit.... And also, the comic "Bomb Scare" at first caught my attention as a realistic account of high school life, but it ended up just being a clichéd story about a picked-on kid receiving sympathy from a popular girl who wants to change her partying lifestyle. But other than these two, there are twenty other short stories and articles that are dynamite. Just reading the beginning of "Marilyn Manson Now Going Door-to-Door Trying to Shock People" will have you laughing like you've never laughed before and hooked on this book. With The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Dave Eggers (with the help of Michael Cart) has put together a dynamic collection impressed with his singular, ingeniously witty personality.