Selected from a survey of more than five hundred English professors, short story writers, and novelists, this revised and updated second edition features fifty remarkable stories written by a wide spectrum of stylistically and culturally diverse authors. <P> Russell Banks - Donald Barthelme - Rick Bass - Richard Bausch - Charles Baxter - Amy Bloom - T. C. Boyle - Kevin Brockmeier - Robert Olen Butler - Sandra Cisneros - Peter Ho Davies - Janet Desaulniers - Junot Diaz - Anthony Doerr - Stuart Dybek - Deborah Eisenberg - Richard Ford - Mary Gaitskill - Dagoberto Gilb - Ron Hansen - A. M. Homes - Mary Hood - Denis Johnson - Edward P. Jones - Thom Jones - Jamaica Kincaid - Jhumpa Lahiri - David Leavitt - Kelly Link - Reginald McKnight - David Means - Susan Minot - Rick Moody - Bharati Mukherjee - Antonya Nelson - Joyce Carol Oates - Tim O'Brien - Daniel Orozco - Julie Orringer - ZZ Packer - E. Annie Proulx - Stacey Richter - George Saunders - Joan Silber - Leslie Marmon Silko - Susan Sontag - Amy Tan - Melanie Rae Thon - Alice Walker - Steve Yarbrough