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The Best American Essays of the Century
The Best American Essays of the Century
CO
Curated by
colinpocock
Updated Jun 11, 2026
49 essays
Topic
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Publication
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Any date
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1
Bop
0.0
Langston Hughes
·
Books & Collections
·
1948
Culture
2
Coatesville
0.0
John Jay Chapman
·
Books & Collections
·
1912
Race
3
Corn-Pone Opinions
9.0
(1)
Mark Twain
·
Books & Collections
·
1923
Culture
4
The Ethics of Living Jim Crow
0.0
Richard Wright
·
Books & Collections
·
1937
Race
5
The Future Is Now
0.0
Katherine Anne Porter
·
Books & Collections
·
1950
Culture
6
Life with Daughters: Watching the Miss America Pageant
0.0
Gerald Early
·
Books & Collections
·
1990
Personal
7
Of the Coming of John
0.0
W.E.B. Du Bois
·
Books & Collections
·
1903
Race
8
Once More to the Lake
0.0
E.B. White
·
Harper's Magazine
·
1941
Nature
9
Artists in Uniform
0.0
Mary McCarthy
·
Harper's Magazine
·
1953
Politics
10
The Brown Wasps
0.0
Loren Eiseley
·
Books & Collections
·
1956
Nature
11
The Crack-Up
0.0
F. Scott Fitzgerald
·
Esquire
·
1936
Personal
12
The Creation Myths of Cooperstown
0.0
Stephen Jay Gould
·
Books & Collections
·
1989
Culture
13
The Devil Baby at Hull-House
0.0
Jane Addams
·
The Atlantic
·
1916
Culture
14
The Disposable Rocket
0.0
John Updike
·
Books & Collections
·
1993
Personal
15
Doomed in Their Sinking
0.0
William H. Gass
·
New York Review of Books
·
1975
Culture
16
A Drugstore in Winter
0.0
Cynthia Ozick
·
Books & Collections
·
1982
Personal
17
The Figure a Poem Makes
0.0
Robert Frost
·
Books & Collections
·
1939
Culture
18
Graven Images
0.0
Saul Bellow
·
The New Yorker
·
1994
Personal
19
Heaven and Nature
0.0
Edward Hoagland
·
Harper's Magazine
·
1988
Nature
20
The Hills of Zion
0.0
H.L. Mencken
·
Books & Collections
·
1925
Culture
21
How It Feels to Be Colored Me
0.0
Zora Neale Hurston
·
Books & Collections
·
1928
Race
22
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
0.0
Maya Angelou
·
Books & Collections
·
1969
Race
23
Illumination Rounds
0.0
Michael Herr
·
Esquire
·
1968
History
24
Insert Flap "A" and Throw Away
0.0
S.J. Perelman
·
Books & Collections
·
1944
Culture
25
Knoxville: Summer of 1915
0.0
James Agee
·
Partisan Review
·
1938
Personal
26
The Law of Acceleration
0.0
Henry Adams
·
Books & Collections
·
1907
History
27
Letter from Birmingham Jail
0.0
Martin Luther King, Jr.
·
Books & Collections
·
1963
Politics
28
The Lives of a Cell
0.0
Lewis Thomas
·
Books & Collections
·
1971
Science
29
Looking for Zora
0.0
Alice Walker
·
Ms. Magazine
·
1975
Culture
30
No Name Woman
0.0
Maxine Hong Kingston
·
Books & Collections
·
1975
Personal
31
Notes of a Native Son
0.0
James Baldwin
·
Harper's Magazine
·
1955
Race
32
Notes on "Camp"
0.0
Susan Sontag
·
Partisan Review
·
1964
Culture
33
Okinawa: The Bloodiest Battle of All
0.0
William Manchester
·
NYT Magazine
·
1987
History
34
The Old Stone House
0.0
Edmund Wilson
·
Books & Collections
·
1933
History
35
Pamplona in July
0.0
Ernest Hemingway
·
Books & Collections
·
1923
Personal
36
Perfect Past
0.0
Vladimir Nabokov
·
The New Yorker
·
1967
Personal
37
Putting Daddy On
0.0
Tom Wolfe
·
Esquire
·
1965
Culture
38
The Search for Marvin Gardens
0.0
John McPhee
·
The New Yorker
·
1972
Culture
39
Sex Ex Machina
0.0
James Thurber
·
Books & Collections
·
1937
Culture
40
The Solace of Open Spaces
0.0
Gretel Ehrlich
·
The Atlantic
·
1981
Nature
41
Stickeen
0.0
John Muir
·
John Muir
·
1897
Nature
42
Sweet Devouring
0.0
Eudora Welty
·
Books & Collections
·
1957
Personal
43
They All Just Went Away
0.0
Joyce Carol Oates
·
The New Yorker
·
1995
Personal
44
Total Eclipse
0.0
Annie Dillard
·
The Atlantic
·
1982
Nature
45
Tradition and the Individual Talent
0.0
T.S. Eliot
·
Books & Collections
·
1919
Culture
46
The Way to Rainy Mountain
0.0
N. Scott Momaday
·
Books & Collections
·
1967
Personal
47
What Are Master-Pieces and Why Are There So Few of Them
0.0
Gertrude Stein
·
Books & Collections
·
1936
Culture
48
The White Album
0.0
Joan Didion
·
Books & Collections
·
1979
Culture
49
Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying
0.0
Adrienne Rich
·
Books & Collections
·
1977
Philosophy