The Best Short Stories of 1917, and the Yearbook of the American Short Story

1917 was a year that split American history in two: before and after the nation's entry into the Great War. This anthology, edited by Edward J. O'Brien, captures American short fiction at that precise hinge moment, when writers were simultaneously looking back at the old world and forward into something uncharted. The collection gathers voices from across the American literary landscape, each story a window onto a nation grappling with modernity, immigration, class, and the sudden weight of global involvement. From the social comedy of a steamboat excursion where a parrot sparks gossip among passengers, to quieter meditations on domestic life and aspiration, the anthology reveals a literary culture in energetic transition. O'Brien's own introduction frames the project as democratic utterance: English and German and Italian and Scandinavian voices fusing into something new. What emerges is not merely a time capsule but a provocation: here is what American writers thought worth telling in the year everything changed.