Editor's note Introduction / Walter Mosley --
Best American American poem from Tin house / Sherman Alexie --
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 @seinfeldtoday --
Best American tattoo stories from penandink.tumblr.com / Wendy MacNaughton and Isaac Fitzgerald --
Best American comic that ends in arson from the Freddie stories / Lynda Barry --
Best American story about a hazardous, symbolical 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 --
