National Book Award: nonfiction

The National Book Awards are annual American awards honoring American writers for books published in the United States. The awards were established in 1936, abandoned during World War Two, and reestablished in 1950. Multiple nonfiction categories were introduced in 1964, but the single, comprehensive nonfiction category was restored 20 years later. So, after the awards were reestablished in 1950, nonfiction existed as an all-inclusive category from 1950 through 1963, and again from 1984 to the present.

2025: One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, by Omar El Akkad

2024: Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling, by Jason De Léon

2023: The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History, by Ned Blackhawk

2022: South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dizon to Understand the Soul of a Nation, by Imani Perry

2021: All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake, by Tiya Miles

2020: The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X, by Les Payne & Tamara Payne

2019: The Yellow House, by Sarah M. Broom

2018: The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, by Jeffrey C. Stewart

2017: The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, by Masha Gessen

2016: Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, by Ibra X. Kendi

2015: Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

2014: Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, by Evan Osnos

2013: The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, by George Packer

2012: Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, by Katherine Boo

2011: The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, by Stephen Greenblatt

2010: Just Kids, by Patti Smith

2009: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, by T.J. Stiles

2008: The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, by Annette Gordon-Reed

2007: Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, by Tim Weiner

2006: The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, by Timothy Egan

2005: The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion

2004: Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age, by Kevin Boyle

2003: Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy, by Carlos Eire

2002: Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, by Robert A. Caro

2001: The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, by Andrew Solomon

2000: In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, by Nathaniel Philbrick

1999: Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, by John W. Dower

1998: Slaves in the Family, by Edward Ball

1997: American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, by Joseph J. Ellis

1996: An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War that Came Between Us, by James P. Carroll

1995: The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts After Communism, by Tina Rosenberg

1994: How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter, by Sherwin B. Nuland

1993: United States: Essays 1952-1992, by Gore Vidal

1992: Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story, by Paul Monette

1991: Freedom: Vol. 1: Freedom in the Making of Western Culture, by Orlando Patterson

1990: The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance, by Ron Chernow

1989: From Beirut to Jerusalem, by Thomas L. Friedman

1988: A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam, by Neil Sheehan

1987: The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Richard Rhodes

1986: Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape, by Barry Lopez

1985: Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families, by J. Anthony Lukas

1984: Andrew Jackson: The Course of American Democracy, 1833-1845, by Robert V. Remini

Several new nonfiction categories were introduced in 1964, and still more changes in the categories were made in the years that followed. I am not including this proliferation of nonfiction subcategories here. The single, comprehensive nonfiction category was restored in 1984.

1963: Henry James, volumes II and III, by Leon Edel

1962: The City in History: Its Origins, its Transformations and its Prospects, by Lewis Mumford

1961: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William L. Shirer

1960: James Joyce, by Richard Ullmann

1959: Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Staël, by J. Christopher Herold

1958: The Lion and the Throne, by Catherine Drinker Bowen

1957: Russia Leaves the War, by George F. Kennan

1956: An American in Italy, by Herbert Kubly

1955: The Measure of Man, by Joseph Wood Krutch

1954: A Stillness at Appomattox, by Bruce Catton

1953: The Course of Empire, by Bernard A. DeVoto

1952: The Sea Around Us, by Rachel Carson

1951: Herman Melville, by Newton Arvin

1950: The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson, by Ralph L. Rusk

The Biblio File: images of publishers, for bibliophiles

Clover Press

David Levine on writers: John Milton

David Levine (1926-2009) was one of America’s most prominent illustrators during a career that spanned decades. No less an authority than Jules Feiffer described him as "the greatest caricaturist of the last half of the 20th century,” although Levine continued to work in the early years of this century as well. Levine’s subjects included himself (above) and people from many walks of life. Authors, scribes and scribblers were a big part of the mix, as these caricatures make clear.  

Lit Toons: Cartoons with a bookish bent

First Lines: Robert Louise Stevenson

Squire Trelawnay, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17— and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benhow Inn and the brown old seaman with the saber cut first took up his lodging under our roof.

Treasure Island

Robert Louis Stevenson

"They say it's your birthday" - writers born on November 26

William Cowper  (1731)

James Dashner  (1972) 

Eugène Ionesco  (1909)
Marilynne Robinson  (1943)
Jonathan Weiner  (1953) 
 

National Book Award: fiction

The National Book Awards are annual American awards honoring American writers for books published in the United States. The awards were established in 1936, abandoned during World War Two, and reestablished in 1950. General fiction was one of four categories when the awards were reestablished, but starting in 1980, several additional fiction prizes were added, including separate prizes for hardcover and paperback books. The single, all-inclusive fiction prize was restored a few years later.

2025: The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother), by Rabih Alameddine 

2024: James, by Percival Everett

2023: Blackouts, by Justin Torres

2022: The Rabbit Hutch, by Tess Gunty

2021: Hell of a Book, by Jason Mott

2020: Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu

2019: Trust Exercise, by Susan Choi

2018: The Friend, by Sigrid Nunez

2017: Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward

2016: The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead

2015: Fortune Smiles: Stories, by Adam Johnson

2014: Redeployment, by Phil Klay

2013: The Good Lord Bird, by James McBridge

2012: The Round House, by Louise Erdrich

2011: Salvage the Bones, by Jesmyn Ward

2010: Lord of Misrule, by Jaimy Gordon

2009: Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann

2008: Shadow Country, by Peter Matthiessen

2007: Tree of Smoke, by Denis Johnson

2006: The Echo Maker, by Richard Powers

2005: Europe Central, by William T. Vollmann

2004: The News from Paraguay, by Lily Tuck

2003: The Great Fire, by Shirley Hazard

2002: Three Junes, by Julia Glass

2001: The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen

2000: In America, by Susan Sontag

1999: Waiting, by Ha Jin

1998: Charming Billy, by Alice MCDermott

1997: Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier

1996: Ship Fever and Other Stories, by Andrea Barrett

1995: Sabbath’s Theater, by Philip Roth

1994: A Frolic of His Own, by William Gaddis

1993: The Shipping News, by A. Annie Proulx

1992: All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy

1991: Mating, by Norman Rush

1990: Middle Passage, by Charles Johnson

1989: Spartina, by John Casey

1988: Paris Trout, by Pete Dexter

1987: Paco’s Story, by Larry Heinemann

1986: World’s Fair, by E.L. Doctorow

1985: White Noise, by Don DeLillo

1984: Victory Over Japan: A Book of Stories, by Ellen Gilchrist

1983: The Color Purple, by Alice Walker (hardcover)

1983: The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, by Eudora Welty (paperback)

1982: Rabbit Is Rich, by John Updike (hardcover)

1982: So Long, See You Tomorrow, by William Maxwell (paperback)

1981: Plains Song: For Female Voices, by Wright Morris (hardcover)

1981: The Stories of John Cheever, by John Cheever (paperback)

1980: Sophie’s Choice, by William Styron (hardcover)

1980: The World According to Garp, by John Irving (paperback)

1979: Going After Cacciato, by Tim O’Brien

1978: Blood Tie, by Mary Lee Settle

1977: The Spectator Bird, by Wallace Stegner

1976: J R, by William Gaddis

1975 (two prizes): Dog Soldiers, by Robert Stone

1975 (two prizes): The Hair of Harold Roux, by Thomas Williams

1974 (two prizes): Gravity’s Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon

1974 (two prizes): A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories, by Isaac Bashevis Singer

1973 (two prizes): Chimera, by John Barth

1973 (two prizes): Augustus, by John Edward Williams

1972: The Complete Stories, by Flannery O’Connor

1971: Mr. Sammler’s Planet, by Saul Bellow

1970: Them, by Joyce Carol Oates

1969: Steps, by Jerzy Kosinski

1968: The Eighth Day, by Thornton Wilder

1967: The Fixer, by Bernard Malamud

1966: The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter, by Katherine Anne Porter

1965: Herzog, by Saul Bellow

1964: The Centaur, by John Updike

1963: Morte d’Urban, by J.F. Powers

1962: The Moviegoer, by Walker Percy

1961: The Waters of Kronos, by Conrad Richter

1960: Goodbye, Columbus, by Philip Roth

1959: The Magic Barrel, by Bernard Malamud

1958: The Wapshot Chronicle, by John Cheever

1957: The Field of Vision, by Wright Morris

1956: Ten North Frederick, by John O’Hara

1955: A Fable, by William Faulkner

1954: The Adventures of Augie March, by Saul Bellow

1953: Invisible Man, by Ralph Elliso

1952: From Here To Eternity, by James Jones

1951: The Collected Stories of William Faulkner, by William Faulkner

1950: The Man with the Golden Arm, by Nelson Algren 

The Biblio File: images of N.E. libraries, for bibliophiles

Joshua Hyde Library, Sturbridge, Massachusetts

David Levine on writers: Mortimer Adler

David Levine (1926-2009) was one of America’s most prominent illustrators during a career that spanned decades. No less an authority than Jules Feiffer described him as "the greatest caricaturist of the last half of the 20th century,” although Levine continued to work in the early years of this century as well. Levine’s subjects included himself (above) and people from many walks of life. Authors, scribes and scribblers were a big part of the mix, as these caricatures make clear. 

Lit Toons: Cartoons with a bookish bent