I bought this because of the 6 authors whose work I love, thinking this would be a great way to provide an anthology for my class. The problem is while I still love these authors, these essays aren't my favorite work by these authors. And too many dog essays. I get it. Orlean is a dog person. Although one of my favorites was about about a woman's trauma adopting a problem dog that she had to put down. Since a friend of my mine's dog was recently attacked and killed by such a dog, I had less sympathy for the author's will to reform Buster, and felt more like her relatives thinking the owner is the one who needs therapy. Still, here I am still writing about that essay, so it must have inspired debate in my mind. It captured the soft-hearted person's dog dilemma. If you adopt from the shelter—you might get a problem dog. But if you adopt from a breeder, you might get a dog with inbred health problems, and why create more dogs when all these loveable dogs are being gassed.

Well, enough on that. But my parting thought is this collection did leave me wondering. Of ALL the essays published in 2005, were these really the BEST?