Table of Contents:
“…/ from The Edge Foundation -- Best American excerpt from a military blog / from A Soldier's Thoughts -- Best American epigraph wherein a contemporary writer quotes a great writer who died in 2005 / from Saturday, by Ian McEwan -- Best American first sentences of novels of 2005 -- Best American new words and phrases / from The Oxford Dictionary of English, revised, second edition -- Best American new band names -- Best American things to know about Chuck Norris / from Chuck Norris facts -- Best American things to know about hoboes / from The Areas of My Expertise -- Shipwreck / Cat Bohannon (from The Georgia Review) -- Nadia / Judy Budnitz (from One Story) -- Pyongyang : a journey in North Korea (excerpt) / Guy Delisle -- The insurgent's tale / Tom Downey (from Rolling Stone) -- The innocents / Gipi (from Wish You Were Here) -- The Iraqi constitution / from The Washington Post -- Me and you and everyone we know / Miranda July (from the original shooting script) -- Wading towards home / Michael Lewis (from The New York Times Magazine) -- Are Iraqis optimistic? / The Lincoln Group -- Room no. 12 / Naguib Mahfouz (from Zoetrop : All-Story) -- Pirate station / Rick Moody (from Gargoyle) -- The kidney-shaped stone that moves every day / Haruki Murakami (from The New Yorker) -- False cognate / Jeff Parker (from Hobart) -- Love it or leave it / David Rakoff (from Don't Get Too Comfortable) -- Trauma on loan / Joe Sacco (from The Guardian) -- The new Mecca / George Saunders (from GQ) -- Peg / Sam Shaw (from Open City) -- Letting go of God? …”