Great Essays, except for one or two.
932000
After reading the book, the above comments are quite accurate. I would just like to point out, as it already has been, that the "my 80's" essay was included for purely personal reasons.

After reading excellent quality essays like "The last Americans" & "Passover in Baghdad" & to then get dragged through "On TV I saw Brideshead Revisited and the Patrice Chereau production of Wagner's Ring...and then "Sometime in the mid-'80s I stopped swallowing cum. I don't miss its taste".

Nothing inherently wrong with that, I guess, but I submit not one of the best American essays of 2004. Sorry, call me low brow.

"My Lost City" & "My Fathers a Book" make it worth buying.

Thank you.
2436874
The problem with these essays is that some of them were written a long time ago. The essay on the Palestinians dates from 1983, so its copious detail is almost irrelevant to current conditions.

This does not gainsay Chomsky's originality and  superiority as a thinker. There is no one like him.
1723576
Some of the writing is too heady and academic for me, and probably for most readers.
But one nice thing about a book of collected essays, such as this one, is that the reader can skip around and read what interests him or her. And there is certainly some interesting reading here.
I'm a fan, and the book has served to deepen my understanding of the band and the music.
1103333
The essays are very good, but I give it 4 stars because some of my favorite (and obscure) authors are missing.
Read it.
2365761
I generally really like the articles.  I've subscribed for about six years, and there are some article that were so excellent I'll never forget them.
Two quibbles, though.
1.  The editorial staff is extremely liberal.  I really avoided all of the Clinton-Monica justification stuff, and how it really all was a Republican conspiracy to put Monica up to it, and how she lied, and how the angelic Clinton was and is a saint.  This left-wing refusal to view reality almost made me cancel my subscription.
2.  I think Tina Brown was the worst thing to happen to the New Yorker.  I liked the articles that went on and on and on, and sometimes tested one's patience.  However, it was almost always worth it to slog through some of them.  The articles on John Paul Vann in Vietnam and mud-flows in Los Angeles (really!) were so excellent I think they are some of the best non-fiction writing of the twentieth century.
3496720
A dozen exceptionally well-written essays on disparate subjects such as coffee, mail and a biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

In "A Piece of Cotton," an essay on the American flag, Fadiman writes, "In the weeks after September 11, I saw for the first time that the flag...has multiple meanings....The red, white, and blue turban worn by the Sikh umbrella vendor a friend walked past in Dupont Circle, not far from the White House, meant Looking like someone and thinking like him are not the same thing....The flags brandished by two cowboy-hatted singers at a country fair we attended on the day the first bombs fell on Afghanistan meant Let's kill the [...]....The flag in our front yard meant We are sad.  And we're sorry we've never done this before.

In "Moving" she writes, "We move more than anyone else.  In a typical year, one in five Americans relocates, whereas in Japan it's one in ten, in Britain one in twelve, and in Germany one in twenty-five....(Traveling is always thought to be more enjoyable than moving: we envy foreign correspondents but pity army brats)."

In "Procrustes and the Culture Wars" she writes, "If I had to step into a polling booth and vote on Homer's sexual politics, I'd pull the NO lever strenuously.  I am therefore very glad that the Odyssey is a poem, not a referendum."  I read the Iliad last year for the first time since college.  Me, too.

I skipped over the one on catching butterflies but the rest are informative and very enjoyable.  A good read.
2996116
Let's face it:  academics are people, too.  And like everyday folk, they enjoy being fans.  Truth be told, the contributors didn't write these essays so much because they had deep insights into the nature of society, but because they, like me and probably you, love BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and ANGEL.  I don't fault them for this:  I praise them.
We are currently seeing a growing number of academic books focusing on Buffy/Angel.  I am completely on the fence as to whether this one or the volume edited by Rhonda V. Wilcox and David Lavery--FIGHTING THE FORCES: WHAT'S AT STAKE IN BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER--is the better.  Both are superior to the more recent BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER AND PHILOSOPHY: FEAR AND TREMBLING IN SUNNYDALE, edited by James B. South.  Interestingly, all the academic studies so far have been anthologies.  It will be curious to see if anyone undertakes a book-length study.
For the most part, these essays in this collection are very interesting.  I suspect that each individual will respond more or less strongly to various essays.  I particularly enjoyed the essays in the first half of the volume, especially "Vampire dialectics: Knowledge, institutions and labour" by Brian Wall and Michael Zyrd.  I had a lot less interest in an essay discussing Buffy in terms of East Asian martial arts films.  And I must confess that I am utterly baffled by Slash fiction--i.e., fan fiction depicting major characters from television shows in kinky homosexual relationships, a practice that originated in STAR TREK.  Personally, the appeal of imaging Xander and Spike as lovers utterly escapes me.  The essay dealing with this aspect of Buffy, therefore, failed to engage me.  But I acknowledge another reader might prefer those essays that I found dull to those I found invigorating.
What is not debatable is the high quality of the essays as a whole.  All anthologies are uneven, either in the abilities of the individual contributors, or in the intrinsic appeal each essay makes to a particular reader.  No reader is likely to enjoy all of this collection, but I'd bet that any academically oriented fan of BUFFY and ANGEL will find more than a few to their liking.  I heartily recommend this.
I should note that there is a second book with nearly the same title edited by Roz Kaveney scheduled for publication in January of 2004.  I am unclear as to whether this will be a reprint or a new, expanded, and updated edition.  The pagination for the new book shows it to be longer.  At any rate, I would heartily recommend anyone interested in this one to also investigate that book, to determine whether it is a second, distinct volume.
4061186
The annual collections of best essays are always remarkable compendiums.  Many of this year's selections were personal reminiscences written in the first person, in much the same mode as editor Cheryl Strayed's own recounting of her coming to terms with loss in "Wild", her account of her solo hike on the Pacific Crest Trail.  Though I am glad to have acquired this and enjoyed many, if not most of the essays, I found it to be a less fulfilling collection than prior years' collections of best essays.  Many seemed to lack power or any sense of revelation, any real justification for the telling.  They were simply a recounting, and left me feeling "meh."
3526605
This book kicked around on the floor of my study for 6 weeks, then I read it straight through, then I immediately went back & re-read big chunks. This probably ISN'T a good idea. I am a big fan of Garner (see other reviews) but there were times in VOICE when I felt by putting this series of essays together that rather than telling us stories he in fact showed us that he has just one story to tell. The same phrases keep popping up in different settings, and read all together this becomes irritating (I kept thinking "you just said that", forgetting that these were notes for talks often given several years apart). I think I would have enjoyed the collection more if I had read each essay seperately, with sufficient distance between them to allow me to miss the repetition. That being said, there is fascinating stuff here, including some very witty & pertinent comments on writing, creativity, madness, education, and response to one's critics. There is also a wonderful "look behind the scenes" at how some of Garner's books came to be. Here there may in fact be some value in the reading of the essays all at once -one can track an early-middle-age dismissal of his first two books (sorry Mr. Garner, I STILL think they are outstanding!) to an eventual coming-to-terms-and-acceptance of their value (Whew!. The discussion of STRANDLOPER is worth the price of admission by itself. SO, my copy of VOICE is now heavily read, heavily annotated & will be inflicted in parts on generations of my students and friends. Get it, read it, but my advice is savor it, this is a collection that shouldn't be rushed.
1861998
A good collection of essays by recognized leaders in a burgeoning field of philosophy. Some are only useful if what the article is discussing is quite familiar to the reader. This holds in particular for some of the articles  on qualia and the article on R. Penrose. It could also be said that the  article on Dennett could have been marginally better if the last part,  concerning his motivations, were snipped.
4608108
A collection of mostly fairly short critical and skeptical essays. Most of them have been published on Goldcares column on Guardian (apparently the best newspaper in Britain). There were a few pretty random and not so readable or interesting ones (like a foreword to a book about small railroads  what did that have to do with this book?), but most of the essays were very good, even when some of them concerned pretty local details like some intricacies of NHS, while many have wider interest. Especially interesting were a couple articles about the Medical Hypothesis journal, the chosen journal where the Finnish scammer, Valkee, publishes its studies about how an ear light cures seasonal fatigue. The quality of that journal seems to be even worse than I imagined. Certainly there would be a dire need for a similar journalist in Finland, who is capable of critique stupid misuses of numbers, statistics and mathematics in journalism and in public science reporting which is made government and other official or semi-official organizations. Bad reporting and poor grasp of numbers is truly international. As a whole this is not as good and interesting book as Bad Science was, but very interesting one anyway. The book contains exhaustive references, so many them that I was surprised when the actual book ended  as according to the reading app there was still a significant percentage of the book left.
1430883
This book collects 33 essays by writers, readers, movie producers and Austen scholars- all dedicated to celebrating Jane Austen.  It's a perfect book to publish at this time since Jane has never been cooler.  She is an action figure, she is a detective, her characters have been made into vampires and zombies, there are countless movies and books surrounding her and her stories.  This collection of essays, though, is about READING Austen's novels.  Not reading the sequels.  Not watching beautiful adaptations.  No, it's about reading the witty, ironic and fabulous Jane's words herself.

On that level, this collection succeeds.  Everyone in it reads and enjoys Austen, and they're all willing to share with readers why they do so.  However, 33 essays is a lot.  There are (in my opinion) far too many essays on Mansfield Park.  This would be fine if they varied a bit, but they basically all say the same sort of thing:  Fanny Price is boring, but she is a moral and kind person.  Yes, I get it.  I don't need to read that five times.

And that, in my opinion, is the shortcoming of this collection.  When you have 33 people talking about one author who wrote six books, you get a lot of repetition.  I can't tell you how many times the same quotes were used- from "It is a truth universally acknowledged" all the way down to Austen's "little bit (two inches wide) of ivory."  It got aggravating.

I think I would have preferred fewer essays in this book- perhaps one on each book Austen wrote, one on her earlier writings, one on her unfinished ones, and then a few on the experience of reading her as a whole.  It was great to read so many opinions on Austen, but as everyone in the book loved her writing, it got a bit repetitive in general (though the specific points made were interesting on their own).

However, that said, this is a book most Janeites will want to own and enjoy.  It is fun to read, though I recommend reading the essays over a longer period of time than I did.  And it will make you want to read Austen again.  As soon as possible.
2934470
This was a lovely book of essays that I read because the author grew up near where I live. My only issue is calling it A Memoir of Girls and Goddesses. It seems like a marketing ploy that is false and wasn't needed.
There are several essays relating to the author's desire to have children and inability to conceive. I am a bit tired of hearing about that and I also don't care. Maybe that seems cold but I'm tired of women defining their lives around this.
97195
It's basically a very well thought out, interesting book. However, subects overlap a little too much at times, eventhough the book is a collections of essays.
3337434
I thought it was pretty good.  I could definitely relate to the observations of the people in the studies.  One thing made me question the authenticity, and that was that all the essays seemed to be written in the same style except for the last one.  Maybe it was just Mr. Taylor's editing of his subjects, or it was all fabricated.  It was a good book, however.
4298051
I hesitated slightly between 4 and 5 stars, and decided on 5 because the best essays in this collection are very good, although a couple are less good. The essays are primarily about Oregon and the Rogue River country. They're moderately autobiographical and mostly in first-person, rather like most science journalism--although he's a writer rather than a journalist, so these are more like literary journalism.

The collection opens with an essay on collecting agates, maybe the weakest essay but with some interesting info about them. Then comes an essay on the afterlife of salmon, in the context of the Cow Creek Indian band, for whom salmon are ritually important. It gets a bit complicated but this is an entertaining read. Then comes an essay on learning about Anna's Hummingbird, which is fascinating. Then is one on mining gold in the Rogue Rover by suction machine--small scale and not particularly environmentally disruptive; there's a section of the river that's open for mining. The next good essay, "The Carcass Toss," describes disposing of dead salmon from the hatchery (after mating, the fish die; the females are put back in the river for anglers and the males "tossed). Most natural salmon runs have greatly shrunk or become extinct, and when once the dead salmon give a shot of nitrogen and other nutrients into the ecosystem, now the fish are tossed into streams to mimic that natural process--it really is important despite what it may sound like.

There's an essay on chanterelle mushrooms, which doubles as an essay on etymology--word people will like it, other readers might want to skip it. Then there's a long essay titled "Homestead," in which he and his wife spend some months on an inholding in a protected area on the Rogue River, this being a sort of odd fellowship for a writer. This is by far the best essay overall, with excellent description of living there, managing chores (that's part of their duties), being careful of bears and snakes, delighting in the woods and birds and wildlife.

I'd say Neely is a writer to watch.
574752
This book is a collection of personal essays written by Dr. Therese Ragen, a psychoanalyst with a private practice in Manhattan.  In each essay (there are a total of seven in this slim volume), Dr. Ragen shares a combination of case histories, personal reflections, and private insights.  In general, the essays tend to center around particular themes--for example, the first, "Legacy," relates to the murder of Dr. Ragen's grandfather by the mob, and the last, "Kate," addresses death.  Dr. Ragen also typically features a single patient in every essay, with the exception of the second essay, "September 11, 2001," in which her experiences with many different patients are discussed.

The case illustrations are interwoven with brief forays into psychoanalytic theory.  This lends a fairly rambling quality to Dr. Ragen's writing--her stories are interesting, but they do wander quite a bit.  Overall, however, I think that fellow therapists will appreciate Dr. Ragen's reflections, finding them to be validating of their own experience, whereas others are likely to enjoy the behind-the-scenes glimpse into the mind of a therapist which her essays provide.