Acclaimed sporting and adventure writer Charles Gaines has spent much of his life on the water, around the world, fishing rod in hand, angling for trout, redfish, salmon, bonefish, bass, marlin, tuna, and practically everything else that swims. Just about any place where there's water to fish and eccentrics to keep him company, Gaines has been. The Next Valley Over, a collection of his best writing on fishing from his long and storied career, is culled from the pages of Men's Journal, Forbes, and Sports Afield, among other publications, and ultimately is about the heart of the sport. While his stories are lined with the accoutrement of angling--the art of technique, the equipment, the lodges, the fish themselves--they're really about why we love to fish and what it means to our culture. As Thoreau once said: "Many men go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after." What "they are after" is what Charles is curious about, and he has devoted the better part of his life and sanity to coming up with answers. Starting and ending at the majestic Lake Tadpole in St. Clair County, Alabama, where Gaines's love of fishing was initially sparked, the Next Valley Over chronicles exploits in exotic locations with eccentric characters. In the process of his quest of nearly every species known to man, Gaines explores what we are really searching for when we fish.

Chosen from the 2012 National Magazine Awards finalists and winners, this anthology is filled with compelling features and profiles, eye-opening reporting, and incisive criticism and analysis of contemporary culture and society. Written by today's leading journalists, the selections cover a range of developments in politics, international affairs, culture, and business -- from the increasingly short shelf lives of celebrity marriages to the ongoing fallout from Wall Street's financial malpractice, from the insidious effects of the lingering wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the resurgent battle over issues pertaining to women's safety and health. Always engaging and informative, "Best American Magazine Writing 2012" is an incomparable resource for the most noteworthy journalism and literary achievements of the year.

Essays include Lawrence Wright ( "The New Yorker") on the history of Scientology and recent challenges to its mission and methods; Matthieu Aikins ( "The Atlantic") on the shady dealings and shifting sands of the war in Afghanistan; the late Christopher Hitchens ( "Vanity Fair") on the physical and emotional toll of cancer; and Joel Stein ( "Time") on the propensity for politicians and other popular figures to get into trouble on the Internet. John Jeremiah Sullivan ( "GQ") immerses himself in David Foster Wallace's curious legacy; Tim Crothers ( "ESPN") follows the inspiring story of Phiona Mutesi, a chess prodigy from the slums of Uganda; Chris Ballard ( "Sports Illustrated") recounts Dewayne Dedmon's struggle to reconcile his faith with a career in sports; Wesley Yang ( "New York") explores the pressure on Asian Americans to succeed and the psychological and cultural consequences when they don't; and Luke Dittrich ( "Esquire") shares the raw experiences of those who survived one of 2011's worst natural disasters: the tornado that hit Joplin, Missouri. The sparkling dialogue and vividly imagined, eccentric characters of Karen Russell's award-winning short story, "The Hox River Window" ( "Zoetrope: All-Story"), rounds out the collection.

"Wyoming" ("The Lost Poems") is a run of poems written and put away in the 1970s. It is the work of a writer who began as a student of poetry but who became a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. None of the poems have been published previously or submitted anywhere for publication.
It is a collection of exploding imagination and acute observation. Love, sex, betrayal, redemption . . . tossed like dice on uniquely American landscapes. With the first poem you wonder where Terry McDonell has been; by the last you are shocked by his answers.