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The Best American Magazine Writing 2008is an essential guide to the year's most entertaining, politically charged, and sophisticated essays. With pieces first published in The Nation, National Geographic, Vanity Fair, and the New Yorker, among other leading publications, this anthology illuminates the most compelling issues of the past year and points to the topics that will concern us in the next. Chosen from among the winners and finalists of the 2008 National Magazine Awards, these articles span an eclectic range, from a chilling account of the CIA's secret interrogation program to a humorous look at the absurdities of modern medicine, from a scathing critique of America's activities in Iraq to an acid takedown of snark culture.The anthology also includes Matthew Scully's fascinating peek inside the making of the George W. Bush presidency; Walter Kirn's surprising report on the mental effects of multitasking; Steve Oney's investigation into the unforeseen casualties of the Iraq War; Christopher Hitchens's frank assessment of the relationship between illicit sex and politics; Matt Taibbi's award-winning profile of Barack Obama; Peter Hessler's tour of China's instant cities; Caitlin Flanagan's flirtation with the online escapades of minors; Kurt Andersen's meditation on American greed; and Evan Wright's absorbing account of Hollywood's oddest comeback. From one girl's escape from Burundi to an exposé of American coal mining, The Best American Magazine Writing 2008showcases the unparalleled work of our greatest writers and critics.

Preface
The Stuff of Books
The Editor's Texts
The Scholar's Dream
The Physician's Lament
The King's Canons
The Cost of a Priceless Book Epilogue: The Boy Who Wrote S& umacr;tras on the Sky
Bnton Rinchendrup's Letter to Editors
The Contents of the Buddhist Canons
The Cost of the Canon at DegT
Notes
References
Index
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

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Excerpt from "Pat Dollard's Hollywood" by Evan Wright, Winner—Profile Writing, Originally published in Vanity Fair

Evan Wright's profile of a failed Hollywood agent turned documentary filmmaker chronicles his subject's harrowing but frequently amusing descent into drugs, madness, and violence and, improbably, his resurrection as a hero of the prowar right. "Pat Dollard's War on Hollywood" is a cautionary tale about what happens when Hollywood meets Baghdad.

Pat Dollard's Hollywood

By Evan Wright

The day before Thanksgiving 2004, Pat Dollard, a Hollywood agent who represented Steven Soderbergh, sent an e-mail to just about everyone he knew containing one word: "Later." Friends worried it was a suicide note. Dollard, forty-two, had spent nearly twenty years in the film business. On a good day he seemed little different than any other successful operator, a sort of hipper version of Entourage's Ari Gold. But often in his turbulent career, bad days outnumbered the good. Once a rising star at William Morris, he was fired in the mid-90s for chronic absenteeism brought on by drinking and drug abuse. He attended twelve-step meetings and bounced back, playing a critical role in getting Soderbergh's Traf. c made. Propaganda Films tapped him to head its management division, and in 2002 he produced Auto Focus, the Paul Schrader--directed biopic about the murder of Hogan's Heroes star Bob Crane—a film in which Dollard has a cameo in drag. In 2004, Dollard cofounded Relativity, a firm which would assist the Marvel Entertainment Group in its half- billion-dollar production deal and went on to produce, after Dollard's exit, Talladega Nights. But Dollard was bingeing again. His fourth wife left him, and his third wife was suing for sole custody of their daughter. News that his daughter would be spending Thanksgiving at the home of Robert Evans—for whom his ex-wife worked as a development executive—sent Dollard into a morbid depression. Late one night he phoned a friend and suggested that everyone might be better off if he were dead. Then he sent his good- bye e-mail.

But Dollard was not planning a suicide, at least not a quick one. Dressed in what he would later describe as his "scumbag hipster agent's uniform"—Prada boots, jeans, and a black-leather jacket—he boarded a plane for New York, then Kuwait City. From there he hopped a military transport to Baghdad and embedded with U.S. Marines in order to make a "prowar documentary." Given the decades of substance abuse, the idea of the chain-smoking, middle-aged Hollywood agent accompanying marines into battle was sort of like Keith Richards competing in an Ironman Triathlon. But Dollard thrived. "My first time in a combat zone, I felt like I had walked into some bizarre fucking ultra-expensive movie set," he would later say. "I had this vivid clarity, like when I used to take LSD. I felt joy. I felt like I had a message from God, or whoever, that this is exactly what I should be doing with my life. I belong in war. I am a warrior."

To those at home it seemed that Dollard had entered dangerous mental territory. Around the New Year in 2005, he e-mailed a photo of himself to friends. In it he is clutching a machine gun, surrounded by marines. Dressed in combat gear, his hair in a mohawk and the word "die" shaved into his chest hair, Dollard looks like the mascot of camp Lord of the Flies.

The H'wood Warrior

Midsummer 2006. Dollard sits across from me at a hotel restaurant near the Los Angeles airport, tearing into a breakfast of waffles, bacon, and black coffee while talking about his ambition to become a "conservative icon, the Michael Moore of the right." He is well on his way, thanks in no small part to a terrible incident that occurred last February in Iraq. While filming U.S. troops in Ramadi, a Humvee Dollard was riding in was struck by a bomb. Two marines were killed, but Dollard—in keeping with a streak of freakishly good luck—was thrown clear from the fiery wreckage and emerged unharmed but for a two-inch cut on his right leg. The bombing was, appropriately enough, first reported in Variety. Dollard was soon invited on Tony Snow's radio show on Fox and spent as much time railing against Hollywood liberalism as he did talking about Iraq. Snow, weeks away from becoming White House press secretary, loved it. He called Dollard a "true believer" and invited him back for two more appearances. Dollard was soon hailed by conservative columnists in U.S. News & World Report and the Washington Times. The New York Post dubbed him the "H'wood Warrior." No small part of his appeal to the right is the fact that Dollard was once a "doctrinaire liberal" who could even boast of close ties to Robert Kennedy Jr., but now speaks of his prowar stance in the most militant terms: "This is a propaganda war, and if I can fight with a camera the same as a marine with his rifle, I will."

Last May he launched a Web site (patdollard.com) and began airing a five-minute trailer of his as yet unfinished documentary, Young Americans. The response was overwhelming: 100,000 hits in the first week, hundreds of supportive e-mails, and unsolicited offers of money. "Dude, I'm becoming a national hero," Dollard tells me.

Compactly built, Dollard dresses in clothes—jeans, Wal-Mart work boots, and an olive-drab T-shirt—which look like they were slept in. His hair is close-cropped, but nevertheless manages to appear disheveled. He hasn't shaved in a few days. His teeth are cracked and stained, and, worst of all, from a health standpoint, his right eye is obscured by a milky blob: a cataract that developed in Iraq which he has never treated. Also in need of attention is a wretched cough, which sounds like a snow shovel scraping on the sidewalk. If he were a homeless man, you'd probably wash your hands after giving him your change.