The Best American Magazine Writing 2017

With the work of reporters under fire worldwide, this year's anthology of National Magazine Award finalists and winners is a timely reminder of the power of journalism. The pieces included here explore the fault lines in American society. Shane Bauer's visceral "My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard" ( Mother Jones ) and Sarah Stillman's depiction of the havoc wreaked on young people's lives when they are put on sex-offender registries ( The New Yorker ) examine controversial criminal-justice practices. And responses to the shocks of the recent election include Matt Taibbi's irreverent dispatches from the campaign trail ( Rolling Stone ), George Saunders's transfixing account of Trump's rallies ( The New Yorker ), and Andrew Sullivan's fears for the future of democracy ( New York ).

In other considerations of the political scene, Jeffrey Goldberg talks through Obama's foreign-policy legacy with the former president ( The Atlantic ), and Gabriel Sherman analyzes how Roger Ailes's fall sheds light on conservative media ( New York ). Linking personal stories to the course of history, Nikole Hannah-Jones looks for a school for her daughter in a rapidly changing, racially divided Brooklyn ( New York Times Magazine ), and Pamela Colloff explores how the 1966 University of Texas Tower mass shooting changed the course of one survivor's life ( Texas Monthly ). A selection of Rebecca Solnit's Harper's commentary ranges from a writer on death row to the isolation at the heart of conservatism. Becca Rothfeld ponders women waiting on love from the Odyssey to Tinder ( Hedgehog Review ). Siddhartha Mukherjee depicts the art and agony of oncology ( New York Times Magazine ). David Quammen ventures to Yellowstone to consider the future of wild places ( National Geographic ), and Mac McClelland follows a deranged expedition to Cuba in search of the ivory-billed woodpecker ( Audubon ). The collection concludes with Zandria Robinson's eloquent portrait of her father as reflected in the music he loved ( Oxford American ).