The Best American Essays 2010: The Free Route

The Best American Essays, 2010, edited by Christopher Hitchens, has now hit the stands. The 300-page collection runs $10.47 online. However, know this: You can read most of the essays online for free. These essays were originally published on websites of major American journals & magazines, and there they still remain. Some notable mentions include The Murder of Leo Tolstoy: A Forensic Investigation by Elif Batuman, How Einstein Divided America’s Jews by Walter Isaacson, On John Updike by Ian McEwan, My Genome, My Self by Steven Pinker, and Guy Walks into a Bar by David Sedaris. Metafilter has pulled together a full list of available texts. Kudos to them. And if you want to read these essays later on (when you actually have some time) give Instapaper a try.  It’s a wonderful way to read texts in a clean format on the iPad, iPhone, and Kindle. The trusty web browser is always an option too.