This is a fine collection with a ludicrous title. If it’s not immediately obvious why its pretence of being a ‘Book of the American Short Story’ merits a Trades Descriptions investigation, simply compare its line-up of authors with that of Joyce Carol Oates’s Oxford Book of American Short Stories. Oates picks Irving, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Wharton, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Baldwin and Bellow – all the names you’d expect. Not one of them wins a place in Ford’s squad.

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