Dear Reader

I’ve been enjoying a gift lately. It arrived in the mail and quickly became my companion. I’d read a few stories before bed, one after coffee on a Sunday, a few with my lunch. Let me narrate my reactions to random pages:

Gasping a bit (page 20). A downed wire has landed on a school bus in rural Michigan. If the kids inside touch metal, they’ll get zapped with 46,000 volts. As fire envelops the bus, the 65-year-old driver has no choice. He must toss each child out the door to a bystander. Please let this work.

Almost spitting up coffee (page 134). A cartoon. A man stands before an angel. To the left is glorious heaven. To the right, hell. On the angel’s desk is a jar full of jelly beans. “New system,” the angel explains. “Guess how many.”

Private fist pump (page 249). A man named Ricardo Klement is walking to his Buenos Aires home in 1960 when he is thrown down and tossed into a car by Israeli agents. Is he who they think he is? When they get to their safe house, they strip his shirt off. Yes—the telltale scar is there! The Mossad—including agent Peter Malkin, who tells this story—has captured Nazi mastermind Adolf Eichmann.

Tearing up (page 73). A woman holds the phone, ashamed of losing her temper after her mother’s fifth frantic call to report an imaginary disaster. Her mom’s memory has been ruined by a stroke. Suddenly her five-year-old takes the phone and says, “Hi, Grandma! Do you want me to sing you a song?” Grandma miraculously comes back to reality: “Sweetheart. How are you?”

These stories (as well as unforgettable photos, such as the tiger above) appear in The Best of Reader’s Digest 2020, the first volume in a new series. When I call it a gift, I mean it. Thank you, RD editors and readers from the 1960s to the 2010s, whose minds and hearts live on in these pages.

If you would like your own copy or to gift it to someone you love, go to rd.com/2020best. And as always, thanks for

reading.