Chosen from the nominees and winners of the 2012 National Magazine Awards, this year's anthology covers a range of developments in culture, commerce, society, and politics, from the passing of Steve Jobs to the controversy over breast cancer research funding, from the ongoing trauma of battle-scarred soldiers to the resurgence of issues concerning women's safety and health. Always engaging and informative, the Best American Magazine Writing remains the most popular, go-to resource for innovative journalism and unique perspective. Selections include Matthieu Aikins ( Esquire ) on the shady dealings and shifting sands of the war in Afghanistan; Nicholas Schmidle ( The New Yorker ) on the Obama Administration's masterful plot to kill Osama bin Laden; the late Christopher Hitchens ( Vanity Fair ) on the physical and emotional toll of cancer, and Joel Stein ( TIME ) on the Kardashian phenomenon and the propensity for politicians and other popular figures to get into trouble on the internet. John Jeremiah Sullivan ( New York Times Magazine ) takes his family on a roller-coaster ride through Disneyland, Wesley Yang ( New York ) explores the pressure on Asian-Americans to succeed and the psychological and cultural consequences when they don't, Bill Heavey ( Field & Stream ) writes eloquently and intimately about hunting and the sportsman's life, and Luke Dittrich ( Esquire ) and Michael Paterniti ( GQ ) share the raw experiences of those who survived 2011's worst natural disasters: the Japanese earthquake and exceptionally severe tornados in the American Midwest. Fiction includes the long-awaited short story by novelist Jonathan Franzen, "Ambition," published in McSweeney's Quarterly, and Karen Russell's "The Hox River Window," featured in Zoetrope: All-Story.