""Any story that starts will also end." As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart. At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a surprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores "what it means to be seen, to find someone...

The author of The Vagina Monologues describes being diagnosed and treated for uterine cancer and how her illness forced her to reconnect with her own body and gave her a better understanding of the resilience of humans.

"The Battle of Iwo Jima, a major event in the Pacific Theater of World War II--and one of the bloodiest in United States history--began on February 19, 1945. But what happened two days earlier has largely been a footnote, until now... On February 17, Landing Craft Infantry 449 was among a dozen gunboats helping to prepare the area for their invasion two days later. U.S. military leaders thought they had weakened Japanese forces in the area so they...

Includes essays and literary works by Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, Herman Melville, Clarence Darrow, John Kenneth Galbraith, and H.L. Mencken as well as an essay by Henry L. Stimson (P.A. 1883) on the decision to use the atomic bomb. Contains primary source material.