Richard Ford introduced the first GRANTA BOOK OF THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY, published in 1992. It became the definitive anthology of American short fiction written in the last half of the twentieth century. In the fourteen years since, Ford has been reading new stories and re-reading old ones. This new collection, of more than forty writers, includes stories that he regretted overlooking first time around as well as many by a new generation of writers, among them Sherman Alexie, Junot Diaz, Deborah Eisenberg, Nell Freudenberg, Matt Klam and Z.Z. Packer. None of the stories was in the first volume.