Our appetite for incisive and articulate reporting and analysis has been sharpened and made more urgent by recent events. And columnists and reporters have, as a group, responded by writing at a higher level. Indeed, this may be something of a golden age of political commentary. This highly readable, entertaining compendium collects the best political writing from the past year, from insightful analyses of the national and local political scene to sharply drawn profiles of some of the nation's most colorful political figures-covering the major topics of the year, including the contentious presidential election and its controversial resolution in the Supreme Court decision, Bush v. Gore, the ineradicable tragedy of September 11, and America's prosecution of seemingly limitless war. Composed primarily of short articles, longer pieces of particular merit, and excerpts from notable books, The Best American Political Writing 2002 covers all points on the political spectrum, gathering from the op-ed pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and other leading national newspapers; commentary from periodicals like The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, The Weekly Standard, and Foreign Affairs; publications of think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution; Web-based magazines like Salon.com; and significant speeches including George W. Bush's address to Congress in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks. Selections come from the country's finest political writers, including Margaret Carlson, Thomas Friedman, Meg Greenfield, Seymour Hersh, Hendrik Hertzberg, Molly Ivins, Paul Krugman, Anthony Lewis, Marjorie Williams, and many others. Together, their voices are a distillation of our national conversation.