Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ploughshares Spring 1976 Guest-Edited by Tim O’Brien with DeWitt Henry and Henry Bromell | 1976 | Tim O’Brien | Buy |
| 2 | The Literary Ghost: Great Contemporary Ghost Stories | 1991 | Tim O’Brien | Buy |
| 3 | The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction | 1999 | Tim O’Brien | Buy |
| 4 | The Putt at the End of the World | 2000 | Tim O’Brien | Buy |
| 5 | 40 Short Stories: A Portable Anthology | 2000 | Tim O’Brien | Buy |
| 6 | The Eloquent Short Story: An Anthology of Narrative Styles | 2004 | Tim O’Brien | Buy |
| 7 | Selected Shorts: Wartime Lives | 2007 | Tim O’Brien | Buy |
| 8 | On War: The Best Military Histories | 2013 | Tim O’Brien | Buy |
Tim O’Brien’s short fiction has been widely anthologized since the 1970s. His stories about Vietnam and its aftermath appear in many of the major American short fiction collections used in classrooms and literary study.
These anthologies range from the Ploughshares literary journal, which O’Brien guest-edited in 1976, to broader collections like 40 Short Stories: A Portable Anthology and The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction. Several focus specifically on war writing, including Selected Shorts: Wartime Lives and On War: The Best Military Histories.