This anthology edited by the New York Times–bestselling author of The Empathy Exams offers “essays that are challenging, passionate, sobering, and clever” (Publishers Weekly).   “The essay is political—and politically useful, by which I mean humanizing and provocative—because of its commitment to nuance, its explorations of contingency, its spirit of unrest, its glee at overturned assumptions; because of the double helix of awe and distrust—faith and doubt—that structures its DNA, ” writes guest editor Leslie Jamison in her introduction to this volume. The essays she has compiled in The Best American Essays 2017 “thrill toward complexity.”   From the Iraqi desert to an East Jerusalem refugee camp, and from the beginnings of the universe to the aftermath of a suicide attempt, these essays bring us, time and again, to the thorny intersection of personal experience and public discourse.    The Best American Essays 2017 includes entries by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Lawrence Jackson, Rachel Kushner, Alan Lightman, Bernard Farai Matambo, Wesley Morris, Heather Sellers, Andrea Stuart, and others.