The Best Short Stories of 1918, and the Yearbook of the American Short Story

This anthology captures American short fiction at a pivotal hinge-point in history. Published in the final year of the Great War, it gathers the year's most notable stories and offers Edward J. O'Brien's candid introduction arguing that the war had overwhelmed writers' imaginations, dampening the literary output of 1918, while expressing quiet faith that something new would rise from the wreckage. The collection opens with Achmed Abdullah's "A Simple Act of Piety," a dark, morally complex tale of a wealthy Chinese man contemplating murder amid urban chaos. Other stories sweep across American life: soldiers in the trenches, families waiting at home, immigrants navigating strange new worlds, and the quietly devastating moments in ordinary lives. What emerges is a literary snapshot of a nation processing trauma, transition, and the uncertain birth of modernism. For readers curious about how American writers heard the thunder of history in their prose, this collection offers front-row seats to a profession working through its own crisis of imagination.