Foreword by Robert Atwan
Introduction by Mary Oliver

SUE ALLISON. Taking a Reading
from Mid-American Review

CHRIS ARTHUR. (En)trance
from The Literary Review

JOHN BERGER. Portrait of a Masked Man
from Harper's Magazine

WENDELL BERRY. Faustian Economics
from Harper's Magazine

BRIAN DOYLE. The Greatest Nature Essay Ever
from Orion

DAVID JAMES DUNCAN. Cherish This Ecstasy
from The Sun

PATRICIA HAMPL. The Dark Art of Description
from The Iowa Review

GARRET KEIZER. And Such Small Deer
from Lapham's Quarterly

VERLYN KLINKENBORG. Our Vanishing Night
from National Geographic

AMY LEACH. You Be the Moon
from A Public Space

MICHAEL LEWIS. The Mansion: A Subprime Parable
from Conde Nast Portfolio

BARRY LOPEZ. Madre de Dios
from Portland

JAMES MARCUS. Faint Music
from Harvard Review

JILL McCORKLE. Cuss Time
from The American Scholar

KATHRYN MILES. Dog Is Our Copilot
form Ecotone

GREGORY ORR, Return to Hayneville
from The Virginia Quarterly Review

CYNTHIA OZICK. Ghost Writers
from PEN America

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ. The God of the Desert
from Harper's Magazine

JANNA MALAMUD SMITH. Shipwrecked
from The American Scholar

JOHN UPDIKE. The Writer in Winter
from AARP Magazine

RYAN VAN METER. First
from The Gettysburg Review

JERALD WALKER. The Mechanics of Being
from the Missouri Review

Contributors' Notes
Notable Essays of 2008