This remarkable collection received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Rea Award for the Short Story, a gold medal from the Commonwealth Club of California, and the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award.
Since its original publication in 1966, this volume has attained classic status. Now its contents have been updated and its cultural framework enlarged by the orginal editors. Many of the 44 stories come from a new writing generation with a contemporary c