In this month's issue of The Atlantic, Benjamin Schwarz picks the five best 'Books of the Year 2010': Deborah Eisenberg, a former visiting faculty member of the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, and Jane Smiley, an Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate, both have work included in this list.

The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg is heralded as a "collection of 20 years’ worth of stories—their milieus vividly defined, their dialogue unsettlingly real, their characters hyperobservant—establishes Eisenberg’s place at the pinnacle of American fiction."

Schwarz describes Jane Smiley's new novel Private Life as "a heartbreaking, bitter, and gorgeous epoch-spanning novel of a woman’s life stunted by marriage..." read more...