Published in association with the British Association for American Studies, this innovative series has become an indispensable collection in American Studies. Each volume tackles an important area and is written by an accepted academic expert within the discipline. Books selected for the series are clearly written introductions designed to offer students definitive short surveys of key topics in the field.

This book offers a reappraisal of a critically underrated genre during a particularly rich period in its history. It is a book about some of the greatest postwar American writers, who consistently found in the short story a form well adapted to their most fundamental preoccupations, and about the literary cultures within which they wrote: the magazines they published in; the prizes they did or did not win; the university courses which taught them how to write, or enabled them to teach others how to write; and their (more often than not disappointing) sales figures. The book includes new readings of important stories by key writers including Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, J. D. Salinger, John Cheever, Donald Barthelme, Grace Paley, Raymond Carver, Lorrie Moore, Tim O'Brien, Denis Johnson, Junot Diaz, Sherman Alexie, Jhumpa Lahiri, David Bezmozgis, Edward P. Jones, David Foster Wallace, Gish Jen, A. M. Homes and Lydia Davis.