The Best American Magazine Writing 2017, Paperback/Sid Holt

With the work of journalists under fire around the world, this year's anthology of National Magazine Awards finalists and winners is a timely reminder of the power of journalism. These pieces from writers driven to explore America's fault lines include Shane Bauer's harrowing ``My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard`` ( Mother Jones ), a visceral portrait of the abuses of the carceral system, and Sarah Stillman's account of the havoc wreaked on young people's lives when they are put on sex-offender registries ( The New Yorker ). In two different considerations of parenting, Nikole Hannah-Jones looks for a school for her daughter in a rapidly changing, racially divided Brooklyn ( New York Times Magazine ) and Michael Chabon takes his thirteen-year-old son to Fashion Week in Paris ( GQ ). Pamela Colloff explores how the 1966 University of Texas Tower mass shooting changed the course of one survivor's life ( Texas Monthly ), and Siddhartha Mukherjee depicts the art and agony of oncology ( New York Times Magazine). Other selections take up the shocks of the election, including Matt Taibbi's irreverent dispatches from the campaign trail ( Rolling Stone) and George Saunders's transfixing account of Trump's rallies ( The New Yorker ). Jeffrey Goldberg talks through Obama's foreign-policy legacy with the president ( The Atlantic), Andrew Sullivan fears for the future of democracy ( New York ), and Gabriel Sherman relates how the women of Fox News brought to light Roger Ailes's predations ( New York ). Joining them are Rebecca Solnit's wide-ranging Harper's commentary, Becca Rothfeld's pondering women waiting from The Odyssey to Tinder ( Hedgehog Review ), and bold expeditions into nature: David Quammen ventures to Yellowstone to consider the future of wild places ( National Geographic ), and Mac McClelland sets off for Cuba in search of the ivory-billed woodpecker ( Audubon ).