The Best American Short Stories 2001

The Tapir`s Morning Bath

After spending a year as an ecological researcher in Panama, Royte describes the wonders of the Panamanian rain forest, including spider monkeys, bats, and leaf-cutter ants, as well as the academics and tourists of Barro Colorado Island. A New York T...

The Seven Sins of Memory

Schacter discusses memory, from the reasons for and kinds of memory loss to the various memory-enhancing techniques that exist. A New York Times Notable Book for 2001.

The Algeria Hotel

Three French towns--Bordeaux, Vichy, and Tulle--are the sites of this investigation into how the contemporary French deal with the ghosts of the past and their participation in WW II after their country fell to the Nazis. A New York Times Notable Boo...

Hoop Roots

Novelist John Edgar Wideman finds meaning and remembrances of things past in his lifelong connection to basketball. He recalls the lessons learned in his youth, explores his identity as an African American, and decodes the etiquette of the court. A N...

Almost

A ghostwriter leaves her husband on the Nantucket-like island where they live, has an affair with an Englishman whose wife is hospitalized, and then is forced to return to the island to investigate when her husband is found dead. A New York Times Not...

The Bostons

These nine stories, written in a variety of styles and dealing with many diverse themes, are linked by recurring characters who weave in and out of the action. They include a pregnant teenager who runs away with her boyfriend and a middle-aged man on...

The Dying Animal

Philip Roth`s perennial character (and alter ego) David Kepesh is the narrator of THE DYING ANIMAL, which finds an aging Kepesh still obsessed with sex, still longing for young women to keep death at bay. He thinks compulsively, in erotic detail, of ...

Esther Stories

These 34 stories are set in Chicago, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nova Scotia--but all are about ordinary people trying to weather life`s vicissitudes. A New York Times Notable Book for 2001.

Hotel Honolulu

The narrator of Theroux`s novel, a failed writer, manages a rundown hotel in Hawaii for a flamboyant character named Buddy Hamstra. The hotel--and in fact the entire city--seems to be people entirely by eccentrics, including a lawyer made melancholy ...

The Persian Bride

John Pitt, an Englishman in Iran, falls in love with a 17-year-old girl, and they secretly marry. But Pitt has married not only a woman but her entire culture, and when Iran erupts in revolution and anarchy, he loses her--and sets out on a long and d...