“The essay has taught me how to live,” writes Jia Tolentino, this year’s Best American Essays guest editor. In a time of escalating authoritarianism and disinformation, we turn to artists and writers to make sense of the world around us. The twenty-one authors featured in this collection do not proselytize, nor do they claim to have all the answers. Instead, they teach with vulnerability, raw truths, and open questions. This volume offers testimonies and personal narratives about war and fear; oblivion and memory; disease, grief, and boredom; nonhuman animals and plants; poverty and hyperabundance; consciousness and solipsism; the loss of literature and the work of art; pretense and respect.