Not terrible, but not many of these stories grabbed me. I liked "Zelig" and "The Survivors". ( )

The Best Short Stories of 1915 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story is the first of the series that eventually became the Best American set of series of books. It’s in the public domain and available on Google Books. I grabbed it because I wanted to see what was considered the best way back then. I did not get or appreciate a few of the stories in the 1969 edition, but they were well-crafted. 1915 is another thing though. Several of the stories appear to be selected not for the quality of the story, but for the political content. I’m quite a fan of stories being explicitly political, but in at least a couple of cases in this collection, the entries had little else going for them. They were mostly ham-handed in their treatment of the politics as well.

Full review: http://reading.kingrat.biz/reviews/best-short-stories-1915-edward-obrien ( )