New York City is not only The New Yorker's place of origin and its sensibility's lifeblood; it is the heart of American literary culture. Wonderful Town collects superb short fiction by many of the magazine's and this country's most accomplished writers. Like all good fiction, these stories take particular places, particular people, and particular events and turn them into dramas of universal enlightenment and emotional impact. Here New York is every great place and every ordinary place. Each life in it, and each life in Wonderful Town, is the life of us all.