Foreword Robert Atwan Atwan, Robert
Introduction Christopher Hitchens Hitchens, Christopher

The Murder of Leo Tolstoy | Elif Batuman | From Harper's Magazine
The Bad Lion | Toni Bentley | From the New York Review of Books
The Dead Book | Jane Churchon | From the Sun
Irreconcilable Dissonance | Brian Doyle | From Oregon Humanities
The Elegant Eyeball | John Gamel | From Alaska Quartely Review
How Einstein Divided America's Jews | Walter Isaacson | From the Atlantic
Lunching on Olympus | Steven L. Isenberg | From the American Scholar
Me, Myself, and I | Jane Kramer | From the New Yorker
When Writers Speak | Arthur Krystal | From the New York Times Book Review
A Rake's Progress | Matt Labash | From the Weekly Standard
Brooklyn the Unknowable | Phillip Lopate | From Harvard Review
On John Updike | Ian McEwan | From the New York Review of Books
My Genome, My Self | Steven Pinker | From the new York Times Magazine
Gyromancy | Ron Rindo | From the Gettysburg Review
Guy Walks into a Bar Car | David Sedaris | From the New Yorker
Speaking in Tongues | Zadie Smith | From the New York Review of Books
Rediscovering Central Asia | S. Frederick Starr | From the Wilson Quarterly
Gettysburg Regres | John H. Summers | From the New Republic
Fatheralong | John Edgar Wideman | From Harper's Magazine
Daredevil | Garry Wills | From the Atlantic
A Fine Rage | James Wood | From the New Yorker

Contributors' Notes
Notable Essays of 2009