Aims to collect a sample of the 'best and most representative' American short fiction from 1970 to 2020. That's more or less my sweet spot, so while I'd only read a small handful of these before - "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" (Le Guin), "Taking Care" (Joy Williams), "Sticks" (Saunders), "The Great Silence" (Ted Chiang), "The Dune" (Stephen King), "The Midnight Zone" (Groff), each good-to-excellent, though the Chiang one isn't one of his best, and Williams, Saunders and Groff in particular being all-timers for me - as a whole it's rich pickings.
Elsewhere there are familiar writers (Raymond Carver, Lydia Davis, Karen Russell - her "St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" is devastatingly good/sad), a couple who I've wanted to read for some time (Denis Johnson, Tim O'Brien) and quality all the way through (I have a weakness for flash, but still, Sandra Cisneros' "Salvador Late or Early" is great). Notable themes: trauma and hardship, sensitively and clearly depicted, seemingly often from personal experience.
