In The Best Australian Essays 2013, Robert Manne draws out this year's most distinctive voices. This superb collection encompasses the personal, with Robert Dessaix's distant summer of love and touch-typing and Helen Garner's reaction to the death of Jill Meagher; and the political, with Chloe Hooper and Pamela Williams reflecting on the last days in office of Gillard and Rudd, while Christos Tsiolkas tells us why we hate asylum seekers and Julian Assange warns of the internet's threat to civilisation. In the spaces between, Richard Flanagan and Murray Bail peer into the world of art, David Free savours the legacy of Monty Python, Julian Meyrick remembers Margaret Thatcher, and Tim Flannery reveals the terrors of jellyfish. Kim Mahood The RiverRozanna Lilley Bohemian ParentsHazel Dooney BrokenAli Alizadeh Teenage TormentRobert Dessaix A CrushHelen Garner MiniaturesKate Legge Two Worlds CollideFran Cusworth Living with DementiaKaren Hitchcock Fat CityKate Forsyth StutteringSybille Smith Growing Up in Two LanguagesMurray Bail Lives of the ArtistsJ.M. Coetzee Gerald MurnaneRichard Flanagan David Walsh and MONAMark McKenna SibeliusAdrian Martin Citizens without a PastDavid Free Monty PythonAnna Goldsworthy ValeChristopher Pearson Guy Rundle SohoJulian Meyrick ThatcherismChloe Hooper Julia GillardPamela Williams How the Rudd Campaign Unravelled Christos Tsiolkas Asylum SeekersAlice Pung Writing about Her FatherSimon Leys Barthes in ChinaMartin Krygier How To Deal with the PastHugh White The Purpose of WarBill McKibben Australian CoalTim Flannery Jellyfish Julian Assange A Call to Arms