The annual Best American Essays series compiles the year’s most noteworthy essays, with 2012 dwelling on such diverse topics as modern psychiatry, Edward Hopper, the evils and joys of transcendentalism, the nostalgia of physical objects, boredom, and the multiverse. The essays in this collection are eye-opening and often haunting: though most collections will have you poking around like a Whitman’s sampler (as noted by ’07’s editor David Foster Wallace), this is one of the first in the series where every essay deserves being read and re-read. The Best American Essays 2012 can be found on Acorn’s New Books shelf.