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And the Winners of the National Book Awards Are...

The National Book Awards were announced last night in New York. The Post's publishing reporter, Bob Thompson, was there.

Here are the Fiction winner and finalists:

WINNER:

  • Peter Matthiessen's Shadow Country (Modern Library)

    • FINALISTS:

  • Aleksandar Hemon's The Lazarus Project (Riverhead)

  • Rachel Kushner's Telex from Cuba (Scribner)

  • Marilynne Robinson's Home (FSG)

  • Salvatore Scibona's The End (Graywolf)


    • Book World editor Marie Arana chaired the Nonfiction committee:

    WINNER:

  • Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (Norton)

    • FINALISTS:

  • Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (Knopf)

  • Jane Mayer, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals (Doubleday)

  • Jim Sheeler, Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives (Penguin)

  • Joan Wickersham, The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order (Harcourt)


    • We should have reviews of more of the books in the Young People's category up soon:

    WINNER:

  • Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied (Scholastic)

    • FINALISTS:

  • Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains (Simon & Schuster)

  • Kathi Appelt, The Underneath (Atheneum)

  • E. Lockhart, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (Hyperion)

  • Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now (Knopf)


    • And here's the poetry list:

    WINNER:

  • Mark Doty, Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems (HarperCollins)

    • FINALISTS:

  • Frank Bidart, Watching the Spring Festival (FSG)

  • Reginald Gibbons, Creatures of a Day (Louisiana State Uni)

  • Richard Howard, Without Saying (Turtle Point)

  • Patricia Smith, Blood Dazzler (Coffee House)

    • What's your reaction to the list? Good choices? What did they miss?

    By Ron Charles |  November 20, 2008; 7:21 AM ET Ron Charles
    Previous: Read the Classics, One Byte at a Time | Next: Another Award Winner Up North

    Comments

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    Ron,
    Thanks--a convenient way for us to keep up. Annette Gordon-Reed's two books on the Jefferson-Hemings relationship are truly monuments. Surely the latest on the Hemings family is a deserving winner. Drew Gilpin Faust's "Suffering" is also a splendid work. (The Civil War is an area I've read in depth.) My thought is that it probably finished second. I assume there is no normal way of finding out how the voting went, is there?

    Posted by: lheffelkcrrcom | November 21, 2008 8:56 AM

    The committee votes are confidential, and even rumors about how members cast their ballots are very hard to come by. (Unlike, say, the Booker, which always leaks like a colander!) In any case, my boss -- chair of the nonfiction committee -- is keeping mum, but it had to have been a tough decision among those titles.

    Posted by: ronchar | November 21, 2008 9:03 AM

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