Readers who agree with Raymond Carver that reading short stories is the second-greatest pleasure in the world the greatest, says Carver, is writing them will find much to be pleased with in these 20 works, culled from 1811 entries originally published in 165 different periodicals. As in other similar collections, stories from the New Yorker predominate, but deservedly, since this journal appears every week and thus brings out far more fiction than any other journal in the country. Hats off to it and the other magazines represented here, to the editors, and especially to accomplished and promising writers like Charles Baxter, James Lee Burke, Frank Conroy, and Mona Simpson for their contributions to this invaluable series, now in its 71st year. - Library Journal.