what the mountains teach

what the Americans do, they not only do well, they scale up perfection to another level... grudgingly, and after long years of disagreeing, i have come to accept it now...
one book that i am reading now is The Best American Magazine Writing 2007... published yearly, the Editors sit together and scan articles from magazines that have a certain circulation figure and select the best in some categories -- profile writing, reporting, etc....
the reason why i have finally fallen for the Americans is not their glam or glitz... it is their objectivity... the brilliant pieces that this book has is keeping me totally enthralled... so be it the Beslan seige where the writer explains that for the entire period that the children of the seige, the children not only went without food, but without water as well... the only fluid they could take was each other's urine... or Reinhold Messner who learnt the basics of life and living from mountains which he climbed alone, without oxygen...
just two examples where, though removed from their continent, not only were stories commissioned (Beslan was a crisis, but Messner was a personality from Italy)... but they have also found a pride of place in an anthology...