All Past National Book Critics Circle Award Winners and Finalists - Page 2
2000 Awards
Fiction Winner
- Jim Crace, Being Dead (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Fiction Finalists
- Amy Bloom, A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You (Random House)
- Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Random House)
- David Means, Assorted Fire Events: Stories (Context Books)
- Zadie Smith, White Teeth (Random House)
General Nonfiction Winner
- Ted Conover, Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing (Random House)
General Nonfiction Finalists
- Fred Anderson, Crucible of War (Knopf)
- Frances Fitzgerald, Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War (Simon & Schuster)
- Laurie Garrett, Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health (Hyperion)
- Alice Kaplan, The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach (Univ. of Chicago)
Biography/Autobiography Winner
- Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (HarperCollins)
Biography/Autobiography Finalists
- Robin Marantz Henig, The Monk in the Garden: The Lost and Found Genius of Gregor Mendel, the Father of Genetics (Houghton Mifflin)
- Victor Kemplerer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942-1945 (Random House)
- David Nasaw, The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst (Houghton Mifflin)
- Jean-Yves Tadie, Marcel Proust: A Life (Viking)
Poetry Winner
- Judy Jordan, Carolina Ghost Woods (LSU)
Poetry Finalists
- Michael Collier, The Ledge (Houghton Mifflin)
- Anne Carson, Men in the Off Hours (Knopf)
- Yusef Komunyakaa, Talking Dirty to the Gods (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
- Davis McCombs, Ultima Thule (Yale)
Criticism Winner
- Cynthia Ozick, Quarrel & Quandary (Knopf)
Criticism Finalists
- Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to Present (HarperCollins)
- Claudia Roth Pierpont, Passionate Minds (Knopf)
- Charles Rosen, Critical Entertainments: Music Old and New (Harvard Univ. Press)
- Sherod Santos, A Poetry of Two Minds (University of Georgia Press)
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Winner
- Daniel Mendelsohn
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
- Barney Rosset
2001 Awards
Fiction Winner
- W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz (Random House)
Fiction Finalists
- Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
- Alice Munro, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories (Knopf)
- Ann Patchett, Bel Canto (HarperCollins)
- Colson Whitehead, John Henry Days (Doubleday)
General Nonfiction Winner
- Nicholson Baker, Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper (Random House)
General Nonfiction Finalists
- Nina Bernstein, The Lost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care (Pantheon)
- Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (Princeton University)
- Laura Hillenbrand, Seabiscuit: An American Legend (Random House)
- Sam Roberts, The Brother: The Untold Story of Atomic Spy David Greenglass and How He Sent His Sister, Ethel Rosenberg, to the Electric Chair (Random House)
Biography/Autobiography Winner
- Adam Sisman, Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Biography/Autobiography Finalists
- Paula Fox, Borrowed Finery: A Memoir (Holt)
- David Hajdu, Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
- Katherine Clark, Milking the Moon: A Southerner's Story of Life on This Planet (Crown)
- Barry Werth, The Scarlet Professor: Newton Arvin: A Literary Life Shattered by Scandal (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)
Poetry Winner
- Albert Goldbarth, Saving Lives (Ohio Statue University)
Poetry Finalists
- Louise Gluck, The Seven Ages (Ecco/HarperCollins)
- Bob Hicok, Animal Soul (Invisible Cities)
- Jane Hirshfield, Given Sugar, Given Salt (HarperCollins)
- Czeslaw Milosz, A Treatise on Poetry (Ecco/HarperCollins)
Criticism Winner
- Martin Amis, The War Against Cliche: Essays and Reviews, 1971-2000 (Talk Miramax)
Criticism Finalists
- H.J. Jackson, Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books (Yale University)
- W.D. Snodgrass, De/Compositions: 101 Good Poems Gone Wrong (Graywolf)
- Rebecca Solnit, As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art (University of Georgia)
- Joy Williams, Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals (Lyons)
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Winner
- Michael Gorra
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
- Jason Epstein
2002 Awards
Fiction Winner
- Ian McEwan, Atonement (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)
Fiction Finalists
- Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
- Aleksandar Hemon, Nowhere Man (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)
- William Kennedy, Roscoe (Viking)
- Edith Templeton, The Darts of Cupid: And Other Stories (Pantheon)
General Nonfiction Winner
- Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (Basic Books)
General Nonfiction Finalists
- Chris Hedges, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (PublicAffairs)
- William Langewiesche, American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center (North Point Press/FSG)
- Richard Rodriguez, Brown: The Last Discovery of America (Viking)
- Gaby Wood, Edison's Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life (Knopf)
Biography/Autobiography Winner
- Janet Browne, Charles Darwin: The Power of Place (Knopf)
Biography/Autobiography Finalists
- Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Knopf)
- Elizabeth Gilbert, The Last American Man (Viking)
- Edmund S. Morgan, Benjamin Franklin (Yale University Press)
- Mark Zwonitzer with Charles Hirshberg, Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone? The Carter Family and Their Legacy in American Music (Simon & Schuster)
Poetry Winner
- B.H. Fairchild, Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest (Norton)
Poetry Finalists
- Major Jackson, Leaving Saturn (University of Georgia Press)
- Harryette Mullen, Sleeping With the Dictionary (University of California Press)
- Sharon Olds, The Unswept Room (Knopf)
- Adam Zagajewski, Without End: New and Selected Poems (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Criticism Winner
- William H. Gass, Tests of Time (Knopf)
Criticism Finalists
- Philip Ball, Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
- Julia Blackburn, Old Man Goya (Pantheon)
- Christopher Ricks, Reviewery (Handsel Books/Other Press)
- Charles Rosen, Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist (Free Press)
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Winner
- Maureen N. McLane
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
- Richard Howard
2003 Awards
Fiction Winner
- Edward P. Jones, The Known World (Amistad)
Fiction Finalists
- Monica Ali, Brick Lane (Scribner)
- Richard Powers, The Time of Our Singing (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
- Tobias Wolff, Old School (Knopf)
- Caryl Phillips, A Distant Shore (Knopf)
General Nonfiction Winner
- Paul Hendrickson, Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and Its Legacy (Knopf)
General Nonfiction Finalists
- Caroline Alexander, The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty (Viking Press)
- Anne Applebaum, Gulag (Doubleday)
- Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx (Scribner)
- William T. Vollmann, Rising Up and Rising Down (McSweeneys)
Biography Winner
- William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (Norton)
Biography Finalists
- Paul Elie, The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
- Blake Bailey, A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates (Picador)
- George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (Yale University Press)
- Carol Loeb Shloss, Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Poetry Winner
- Susan Stewart, Columbarium (University of Chicago Press)
Poetry Finalists
- Carolyn Forche, Blue Hour (HarperCollins)
- Tony Hoagland, What Narcissism Means to Me (Graywolf)
- Venus Khoury-Ghata, translated by Marilyn Hacker, She Says (Graywolf)
- Mary Szybist, Granted (Alice James Books)
Criticism Winner
- Rebecca Solnit, River of Shadows (Viking Press)
Criticism Finalists
- Dagoberto Gilb, Gritos (Grove)
- Nick Hornby, Songbook (McSweeneys)
- Ross King, Michelangelo & the Popes Ceiling (Walker)
- Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Award Winner
- Scott McLemee
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
- Studs Terkel
2004 Awards
Fiction Winner
- Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Fiction Finalists
- Edwidge Danticat, The Dew Breaker (Knopf)
- Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty (Bloomsbury)
- David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas (Random House)
- Philip Roth, The Plot Against America (Houghton Mifflin)
General Nonfiction Winner
- Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation: A History (Viking)
General Nonfiction Finalists
- Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age (Henry Holt)
- Edward Conlon, Blue Blood (Riverhead Books)
- David Shipler, The Working Poor: Invisible in America (Knopf)
- Timothy Tyson, Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story (Crown)
Biography Winner
- Mark Stevens & Annalyn Swan, De Kooning: An American Master (Knopf)
Biography Finalists
- Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (Penguin Press)
- Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Vol. 1 (Simon & Schuster)
- Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (W.W. Norton)
- John Guy, Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart (Houghton Mifflin)
Poetry Winner
- Adrienne Rich, The School Among the Ruins: Poems 2000-2004 (W.W. Norton)
Poetry Finalists
- Brigit Pegeen Kelly, The Orchard (BOA Editions)
- D.A. Powell, Cocktails (Graywolf)
- James Richardson, Interglacial (Ausable Press)
- Gary Snyder, Danger on Peaks (Shoemaker & Hoard)
Criticism Winner
- Patrick Neate, Where You’re At: Notes From the Frontline of a Hip-Hop Planet (Riverhead Books)
Criticism Finalists
- Richard Howard, Paper Trail: Selected Prose, 1965-2003 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
- Graham Robb, Strangers: Homosexual Love in the 19th Century (W.W. Norton)
- Craig Seligman, Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me (Counterpoint)
- James Wood, The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Winner
- David Orr
Ivan R. Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
- Louis Rubin Jr.
2005 Awards
Fiction Winner
- E.L. Doctorow, The March (Random House)
Fiction Finalists
- Mary Gaitskill, Veronica (Pantheon)
- Andrea Levy, Small Island (Picador)
- Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go (Knopf)
- William T. Vollmann, Europe Central (Viking)
General Nonfiction Winner
- Svetlana Alexievich, Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of Nuclear Disaster (Dalkey Archive Press)
General Nonfiction Finalists
- Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East (Knopf)
- Ellen Meloy, Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild (Pantheon)
- Caroline Moorehead, Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees (Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books)
- Anthony Shadid, Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War (Henry Holt)
Biography Winner
- Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Knopf)
Biography Finalists
- Carolyn Burke, Lee Miller: A Life (Knopf)
- Jonathan Coe, Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson (Continuum International)
- Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (Simon & Schuster)
- Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life (Free Press)
Autobiography/Memoir Winner
- Francine du Plessix Gray, Them: A Memoir of Parents (Penguin Press)
Autobiography/Memoir Finalists
- Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (Knopf)
- Judith Moore, Fat Girl: A True Story (Gotham Books)
- Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul: Memories and the City (Knopf)
- Vikram Seth, Two Lives (HarperCollins)
Poetry Winner
- Jack Gilbert, Refusing Heaven (Knopf)
Poetry Finalists
- Simon Armitage, The Shout (Harcourt)
- Blas Manuel de Luna, Bent to the Earth (Carnegie Mellon Univ. Press)
- Richard Siken, Crush (Yale University Press)
- Ron Slate, The Incentive of the Maggot (Houghton Mifflin/Mariner Books)
Criticism Winner
- William Logan, The Undiscovered Country: Poetry in the Age of Tin (Columbia University Press)
Criticism Finalists
- Hal Crowther, Gather at the River: Notes From the Post-Millennial South (Louisiana State Univ. Press)
- Arthur Danto, Unnatural Wonders (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
- John Updike, Still Looking: Essays on American Art (Knopf)
- Eliot Weinberger, What Happened Here: Bush Chronicles (New Directions)
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Winner
- Wyatt Mason
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Finalists
- Katherine Powers
- Allen Barra
- Carlin Romano
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
- Bill Henderson, author and director of The Pushcart Press
2006 Awards
Fiction Winner
- Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss (Grove/Atlantic)
Fiction Finalists
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun (Knopf)
- Dave Eggers, What Is the What (McSweeney's)
- Richard Ford, The Lay of the Land (Knopf)
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road (Knopf)
General Nonfiction Winner
- Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution (Ecco)
General Nonfiction Finalists
- Patrick Cockburn, The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq (Verso)
- Anne Fessler, The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe V. Wade (Penguin Press)
- Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Penguin Press)
- Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew and the Heart of the Middle East (Bloomsbury)
Biography Winner
- Julie Phillips, James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon (St.Martin's Press)
Biography Finalists
- Debby Applegate, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher (Doubleday)
- Taylor Branch, At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968 (Simon& Schuster)
- Frederick Brown, Flaubert: A Biography (Little, Brown)
- Jason Roberts, A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler (HarperCollins)
Autobiography/Memoir Winner
- Daniel Mendelsohn, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million (HarperCollins)
Autobiography/Memoir Finalists
- Donald Antrim, The Afterlife (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
- Alison Bechdel, Fun Home (Houghton Mifflin)
- Alexander Masters, Stuart: A Life Backwards (Delacorte)
- Teri Jentz, Strange Piece of Paradise (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Poetry Winner
- Troy Jollimore, Tom Thomson in Purgatory (Margie/Intuit House)
Poetry Finalists
- Daisy Fried, My Brother is Getting Arrested Again (University of Pittsburgh Press)
- Miltos Sachtouris, Poems (1945-1971) (Archipelego Books)
- Frederick Seidel, Ooga-Booga (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
- W.D. Snodgrass, Not for Specialists: New and Selected Poems (BOA Editions)
Criticism Winner
- Lawrence Weschler, Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences (McSweeney's)
Criticism Finalists
- Bruce Bawer: While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West From Within (Doubleday)
- Frederick Crews, Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays (Shoemaker & Hoard)
- Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion As a Natural Phenomenon (Viking)
- Lia Purpura, On Looking: Essays (Sarabande Books)
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Winner
- Steven G. Kellman
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Finalists
- Ron Charles
- Kathryn Harrison
- Gideon Lewis-Kraus
- Donna Rifkind
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
- John Leonard
2007 Awards
Fiction Winner
- Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead)
Fiction Finalists
- Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games (HarperCollins)
- Hisham Matar, In The Country of Men (Dial Press)
- Joyce Carol Oates, The Gravedigger’s Daughter (Ecco)
- Marianne Wiggins, The Shadow Catcher (Simon & Schuster)
General Nonfiction Winner
- Harriet Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present (Doubleday)
General Nonfiction Finalists
- Philip Gura, American Transcendentalism (Hill & Wang)
- Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America 1815-1848 (Oxford University Press)
- Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA (Doubleday)
- Alan Weisman, The World Without Us, Thomas Dunne (BKs/St. Martin’s)
Biography Winner
- Tim Jeal, Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer (Yale University Press)
Biography Finalists
- Hermione Lee, Edith Wharton (Knopf)
- Arnold Rampersad, Ralph Ellison (Knopf)
- John Richardson, The Life Of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932 (Knopf)
- Claire Tomalin, Thomas Hardy (Penguin Press)
Autobiography
- Edwidge Danticat, Brother, I’m Dying (Knopf)
Autobiography/Memoir Finalists
- Joshua Clark, Heart Like Water: Surviving Katrina and Life in Its Disaster Zone (Free Press)
- Joyce Carol Oates, The Journals of Joyce Carol Oates, 1973–1982 (Ecco)
- Sara Paretsky, Writing in an Age of Silence (Verso)
- Anna Politkovskaya, Russian Diary: A Journalist’s Final Account of Life, Corruption and Death in Putin’s Russia (Random House)
Poetry Winner
- Mary Jo Bang, Elegy (Graywolf)
Poetry Finalists
- Matthea Harvey, Modern Life (Graywolf)
- Michael O’Brien, Sleeping and Waking (Flood)
- Tom Pickard, The Ballad of Jamie Allan (Flood)
- Tadeusz Rozewicz, New Poems (Archipelago)
Criticism Winner
- Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
Criticism Finalists
- Joan Acocella, Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints (Pantheon)
- Julia Alvarez, Once Upon a Quniceanera (Viking)
- Susan Faludi, The Terror Dream (Metropolitan/Holt)
- Ben Ratliff, Coltrane: The Story of a Sound (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Winner
- Sam Anderson
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Finalists
- Brooke Allen
- Ron Charles
- Walter Kirn
- Adam Kirsch
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
- Emilie Buchwald
2008 Awards
Fiction Winner
- Roberto Bolaño, 2666 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Fiction Finalists
- Marilynne Robinson, Home (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
- Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project (Riverhead)
- M. Glenn Taylor, The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart (West Virginia University Press)
- Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kittredge (Random House)
General Nonfiction Winner
- Dexter Filkins, The Forever War (Knopf)
General Nonfiction Finalists
- Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the Civil War (Knopf)
- Jane Mayer, The Dark Side (Doubleday)
- Allan Lichtman, White Protestant Nation (Atlantic)
- George C. Herring, From Colony to Superpower: US Foreign Relations Since 1776 (Oxford University Press)
Biography Winner
- Patrick French, The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul (Knopf)
Biography Finalists
- Paula J. Giddings, Ida, A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching (Amistad/Knopf)
- Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in an American Century (Penguin Press)
- Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (Norton)
- Brenda Wineapple, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson & Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Knopf)
Autobiography
- Ariel Sabar, My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq (Algonquin)
Autobiography/Memoir Finalists
- Rick Bass, Why I Came West (Houghton Mifflin)
- Helene Cooper, The House on Sugar Beach (Simon and Schuster)
- Honor Moore, The Bishop’s Daughter (W.W. Norton)
- Andrew X. Pham, The Eaves of Heaven (Harmony Books)
Poetry Winners
- Juan Felipe Herrera, Half the World in Light (University of Arizona Press)
- August Kleinzahler, Sleeping It Off in Rapid City (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Poetry Finalists
- Devin Johnston, Sources (Turtle Point Press)
- Pierre Martory (trans. John Ashbery), The Landscapist (Sheep Meadow Press)
- Brenda Shaughnessy, Human Dark With Sugar (Copper Canyon Press)
Criticism Winner
- Seth Lerer, Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History: Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter (University of Chicago Press)
Criticism Finalists
- Richard Brody, Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life Of Jean-Luc Godard (Metropolitan Books)
- Vivian Gornick, The Men in My Life (Boston Review/MIT)
- Joel L. Kraemer, Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization’s Greatest Minds (Doubleday)
- Reginald Shepherd, Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry (University of Michigan Press)
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Winner
- Ron Charles
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Finalists
- Michael Antman
- Kathryn Harrison
- Laila Lalami
- Todd Shy
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
- PEN American Center
2009 Awards
Fiction Winner
- Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (Holt)
Fiction Finalists
- Bonnie Jo Campbell, American Salvage (Wayne State University Press)
- Marlon James, The Book of Night Women (Riverhead)
- Michelle Huneven, Blame (Sarah Crichton Books/FSG)
- Jayne Anne Phillips, Lark and Termite (Knopf)
General Nonfiction Winner
- Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (Pantheon)
General Nonfiction Finalists
- Wendy Doniger, The Hindus: An Alternative History (Penguin Press)
- Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City (Metropolitan Books)
- Tracy Kidder, Strength in What Remains (Random House)
- William T. Vollmann, Imperial (Viking)
Biography Winner
- Blake Bailey, Cheever: A Life (Knopf)
Biography Finalists
- Brad Gooch, Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor (Little, Brown)
- Benjamin Moser, Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector (Oxford University Press)
- Stanislao G. Pugliese, Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Martha A. Sandweiss, Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line (Penguin Press)
Autobiography
- Diana Athill, Somewhere Towards the End (Norton)
Autobiography/Memoir Finalists
- Debra Gwartney, Live Through This: A Mother's Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love (Houghton Mifflin)
- Mary Karr, Lit (Harper)
- Kati Marton, Enemies of the People: My Family's Journey to America (Simon & Schuster)
- Edmund White, City Boy (Bloomsbury)
Poetry Winner
- Rae Armantrout, Versed (Wesleyan)
Poetry Finalists
- Louise Glück, A Village Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- D.A. Powell, Chronic (Graywolf Press)
- Eleanor Ross Taylor, Captive Voices: New and Selected Poems, 1960–2008 (Louisiana State University Press)
- Rachel Zucker, Museum of Accidents (Wave Books)
Criticism Winner
- Eula Biss, Notes From No Man's Land: American Essays (Graywolf Press)
Criticism Finalists
- Stephen Burt, Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry (Graywolf Press)
- Morris Dickstein, Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression (Norton)
- David Hajdu, Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture (Da Capo Press)
- Greg Milner, Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music (Faber)
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Winner
- Joan Acocella
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Finalists
- Michael Antman
- William Deresiewicz
- Donna Seaman
- Wendy Smith
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
- Joyce Carol Oates
2010 Awards
Fiction Winner
- Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad (Knopf)
Fiction Finalists
- Jonathan Franzen, Freedom (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
- David Grossman, To the End of the Land (Knopf)
- Hans Keilson, Comedy in a Minor Key, tr. by Damion Searls (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
- Paul Murray, Skippy Dies (Faber & Faber)
General Nonfiction Winner
- Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (Random House)
General Nonfiction Finalists
- Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (Spiegel & Grau)
- S.C. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History (Scribner)
- Jennifer Homans, Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet (Random House)
- Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (Scribner)
Biography Winner
- Sarah Bakewell, How To Live: Or, A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (Other Press)
Biography Finalists
- Selina Hastings, The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham (Random House)
- Yunte Huang, Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous With American History (W.W. Norton)
- Thomas Powers, The Killing of Crazy Horse (Knopf)
- Tom Segev, Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends (Doubleday)
Autobiography
- Darin Strauss, Half a Life (McSweeney’s)
Autobiography/Memoir Finalists
- Kai Bird, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956–1978 (Scribner)
- David Dow, The Autobiography of an Execution (Twelve)
- Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir (Twelve)
- Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, Hiroshima in the Morning (Feminist Press)
Poetry Winner
- C. D. Wright’s One with Others: [a little book of her days] (Copper Canyon)
Poetry Finalists
- Anne Carson, Nox (New Directions)
- Kathleen Graber, The Eternal City (Princeton University Press)
- Terrance Hayes, Lighthead (Penguin Poets)
- Kay Ryan, The Best of It: New and Selected Poems (Grove Press)
Criticism Winner
- Clare Cavanagh, Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West (Yale University Press)
Criticism Finalists
- Elif Batuman, The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
- Terry Castle, The Professor and Other Writings (Harper)
- Susie Linfield, The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence (University of Chicago Press)
- Ander Monson, Vanishing Point: Not a Memoir (Graywolf)
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Winner
- Parul Sehgal
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Finalists
- Sarah L. Courteau
- William Deresiewicz
- Ruth Franklin
- Kathryn Harrison
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
- Dalkey Archive Press
Awards Information
- » Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing
- » NBCC Awards Submission Process and Contact List for 2012 Books
- » Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award
- » All Past National Book Critics Circle Award Winners and Finalists
- » 30 Books in 30 Days Archive
Awards News
- » NBCC Awards on C-SPAN This Weekend
- » Photos from NBCC Finalists Readings, Award Ceremony and Reception
- » For Immediate Release: NBCC Award Winners for Publishing Year 2011
- » David Haglund on Teju Cole’s “Open City”
- » Carlin Romano on Ezra F. Vogel’s “Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China”
- » See All Awards News
Awards FAQs
- » How does the NBCC decide which books win the awards?
- » How can I nominate or submit a book for the award and where do I find the application?
- » What books are eligible for the award?
- » Where can I find a list of all past NBCC award winners and finalists?
- » Do you only give awards to books by US authors?
- » What is the publication date range for the yearly awards?
- » When will the NBCC winners be announced?
- » How do you nominate a candidate for the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award?
- » How do you submit reviews for the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing?