'This year's Best Australian Essays offers riveting snapshots of the nation's "current loves and angers, its art and myths and amusements and gender concerns - and its propensity for bushfires."

'From Alex Miller on the creative imagination to Mark Dapin on crime myths, from Amanda Hooton on Miss Universe to Tim Flannery on the inner lives of animals, this is a collection that takes the pulse of the nation's writers and thinkers and finds them in rude health.' (From the publisher's website.)