Editor's note Introduction / Walter Mosley
Best American American poem from Tin house /
Best American term paper assignment from Kurt Vonnegut letters / Dan Wakefield, editor
Best American anti-war poetry inspired by Kurt Vonnegut from So it goes / Katharyn Howd Machan, Robert West, Shari Wagner, and Jim Wise
Best American consumer report from www.yelpingwithcormac.tumblr.com / EDW Lynch
Best American advertisement for a home security system from Subtropics / Tim Wirkus
Best American apocryphal discussion between our nation's founding fathers from the New Yorker / Teddy Wayne
Best American yada yada yada from @seinfeltoday
Best American tattoo stories from penandink.tumblr.com / Wendy MacNaughton and Isaac Fitzgerald
Best American comic that ends in arson
Best American story about a hazardoud, symbolic cesspool from the Paris review / Peter Orner
Best American poem about a particle accelerator from Ninth letter / Brendan Todt
Best American account of tragedy and nationality from Throwing stones at the moon / Sibylla Brodzinsky, Catalina Hoyos, Max Schoening
Finding Oscar: massacre, memory, and justice in Guatemala from ProPublica / Ana Arana and Sebastian Rotella
Hannah and Andrew from Texas monthly / Pamela Colloff
Black box from the New Yorker / Jennifer Egan
Bewildered decisions in times of mercantile terror from the Paris review / Jim Gavin
Cuba's new now from National geographic / Cynthia Gorney
All due respect from the New Yorker / Peter Hessler
Everyone's reading bastard from Byliner / Nick Hornby
How to slowly kill yourself and others in America : a rememberance from Cold drank / Kiese Laymon
Snake River gorge from Tin house / Alexander Maksik
Seven stories about Kenel of Koulèv-ville from the Iowa review / Kyle Minor
Casino from Guernica / Alix Ohlin
East of the West from Storyville / Miroslav Penkov
Two deaths from Epiphany / Kim Philley
Human snowball from the Paris review / Davy Rothbart
The blind faith of the one-eyed matador from GQ / Karen Russell / Bones from Southwest review / Alexis Schaitkin
Falling from Ecotone / Andrew Tonkovich
Lorry Raja from Narrative magazine / Madhuri Vijay
The best American nonrequired reading committee
Notable nonrequired reading of 2012
