Robert Atwan, the founder of The Best American Essays series, picks the 10 best essays of the postwar period. Links to the essays are provided when available. To my mind, the best essays are deeply ...

Extended "discourse," such as class presentations or essays written as school assignments, has a particular structure arising from particular expectations and standards. Such structure, expectations, ...

The introduction of a narrative essay sets the scene for the story that follows. Interesting introductions—for any kind of writing—engage and draw readers in because they want to know more. Since ...

What happened? To answer that, it helps to consider what gave rise to the personal essay’s ubiquity in the first place. Around 2008, several factors converged. In preceding years, private blogs and ...

If you’re reading this, chances are your goal is to get into an elite school such as Stanford, Yale, or Harvard. A quick investigation into these schools reveals that the increasing number of ...

The first essay anybody writes is for school. Same here. But the only examples I remember are the ones I wrote at the end, in my A-level exams. One compared Hitler to Stalin. Another, Martin Luther ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Covering education, entrepreneurship, AI, innovation, and nomad travel The college admissions process has become increasingly ...