National Book Critics Circle Awards The National Book Critics Circle, consisting of nearly 700 active book reviewers, each year presents awards for the best book in five categories: fiction, general nonfiction, biography/autobiography, poetry, and criticism. Prior to 1997, the award was limited to American citizens, when the eligibility rules were changed to include all authors of the best books published in the United States, regardless of nationality. 2006 Fiction: The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai (Atlantic Monthly Press) Nonfiction: Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution by Simon Schama (Ecco) Biography: James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips (St. Martin's) Memoir/Autobiography: The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn (HarperCollins) Poetry: Tom Thomson in Purgatory by Troy Jollimore (Margie/Intuit House) Criticism: Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences by Lawrence Weschler (McSweeney's) The Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing: Steven Kellman The Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement: John Leonard 2005 Fiction: The March: A Novel, E.L. Doctorow (Random House) Nonfiction: Voices From Chernobyl, Svetlana Alexievich (Dalkey Archive Press) Biography: American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin (Knopf) Autobiography: Them: A Memoir of Parents, Francine du Plessix Gray (Penguin Press) Criticism: The Undiscovered Country: Poetry in the Age of Tin, William Logan (Columbia University Press) Poetry: Refusing Heaven: Poems, Jack Gilbert (Knopf) 2004 Fiction: Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) General Nonfiction: The Reformation: A History, Diarmaid MacCulloch(Viking) Biography/Autobiography: De Kooning: An American Master, Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan (Knopf) Poetry: The School Among the Ruins, Adrienne Rich (Norton) Criticism: Where You're At: Notes From the Frontline of a Hip-Hop Planet, Patrick Neate (Riverhead) 2003 Fiction: The Known World, Edward P. Jones (Amistad Press) General Nonfiction: Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and Its Legacy , Paul Hendrickson (Vintage) Biography/Autobiography: Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, William Taubman (Norton) Poetry: Columbarium, Susan Stewart (University of Chicago Press) Criticism: River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West , Rebecca Solnit (Viking) 2002 Fiction: Atonement, Ian McEwan (Doubleday/Nan A. Talese) General Nonfiction: A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, Samantha Power (Basic Books) Biography/Autobiography: Charles Darwin: The Power of Place, Vol. II, Janet Browne (Knopf) Poetry: Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest, B.H. Fairchild (Norton) Criticism: Tests of Time, William H. Gass (Knopf) 2001 Fiction: Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald (Random House) General Nonfiction: Double Ford: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, Nicholson Baker, (Random House) Biography/Autobiography: Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson, Adam Sisman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Poetry: Saving Lives, Albert Goldbarth (Ohio State University Press) Criticism: The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews, 1971-2000, Martin Amis (Talk Miramax) 2000 Fiction: Being Dead, Jim Crace (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) General Nonfiction: Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, Ted Conover(Random House) Biography/Autobiography: Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, Herbert P. Bix (HarperCollins) Poetry: Carolina Ghost Woods, Judy Jordan (Louisiana State University Press) Criticism: Quarrel & Quandary, Cynthia Ozick (Knopf) 1999 Fiction: Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem (Doubleday) General Nonfiction: Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior, Jonathan Weiner(Knopf) Biography/Autobiography: The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White, Henry Wiencek (St. Martin's) Poetry: Ordinary Works, Ruth Stone (Paris Press) Criticism: Selected Non-Fictions, Jorge Louis Borges (Viking) 1998 Fiction: The Love of a Good Woman, Alice Munro (Alfred A. Knopf) General Nonfiction: We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, Philip Gourevitch (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Biography/Autobiography: A Beautiful Mind, Sylvia Nasar (Simon & Schuster) Poetry:The Bird Catcher, Marie Ponsot (Alfred A. Knopf) Criticism:Visions of Jazz: The First Century, Gary Giddons (Oxford University Press) 1997 Fiction: The Blue Flower, Penelope Fitzgerald (Mariner/Houghton Mifflin) General Nonfiction: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Anne Fadiman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Biography/Autobiography: Ernie Pyle's War, James E. Tobin (Free Press) Poetry: Black Zodiac, Charles Wright (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Criticism: Making Waves, Mario Vargas Llosa (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) 1996 Fiction: Women in Their Beds, Gina Berriault (Counterpoint) General Nonfiction: Bad Land, Jonathan Raban (Pantheon) Biography/Autobiography: Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt (Scribner) Poetry: Sun Under Wood, Robert Hass (Ecco Press) Criticism: Finding a Form, William Gass (Knopf) 1995 Fiction: Mrs. Ted Bliss, Stanley Elkin (Hyperion) General Nonfiction: A Civil Action, Jonathon Harr (Random House) Biography/Autobiography: Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson, Robert Polito (Knopf) Poetry: Time and Money, William Matthews (Houghton Mifflin) Criticism: The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France, Robert Darnton (W.W. Norton) 1994 Fiction: The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (Viking) General Nonfiction: The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War, Lynn H. Nicholas (Knopf) Biography/Autobiography: Shot in the Heart, Mikal Gilmore (Doubleday) Poetry: Rider, Mark Rudman (Wesleyan University Press) Criticism: The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature and Modern American Culture, Gerald Early (Ecco Press) 1993 Fiction: A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest J. Gaines (Knopf) General Nonfiction: The Land Where the Blues Began, Alan Lomax (Pantheon) Biography/Autobiography: Genet, Edmund White (Knopf) Poetry: My Alexandria, Mark Doty (University of Illinois) Criticism: Opera in America: A Cultural History, John Dizikes (Yale University) 1992 Fiction: All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy (Knopf) General Nonfiction: Young Men and Fire, Norman Maclean (University of Chicago Press) Biography/Autobiography: Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her World, Carol Brightman (Clarkson N. Potter) Poetry: Collected Shorter Poems 1946-1991, Hayden Carruth (Copper Canyon Press) Criticism: Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America, Garry Wills (Simon & Schuster) 1991 Fiction: A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley (Knopf) General Nonfiction: Backlash: The Undeclared War Against America Women, Susan Faludi (Crown) Biography/Autobiography: Patrimony: A True Story, Philip Roth (Simon & Schuster) Poetry: Heaven and Earth: A Cosmology, Albert Goldbarth (University of Georgia Press) Criticism: Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory, Lawrence L. Langer (Yale University Press) 1990 Fiction: Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (Knopf) General Nonfiction: The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America, Shelby Steele (HarperCollins) Biography/Autobiography: Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. II, Robert A. Caro (Knopf) Poetry: Bitter Angel, Amy Gerstler (North Point Press) Criticism: Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Historical Present, Arthur C. Danto (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) 1989 Fiction: Billy Bathgate, E.L. Doctorow (Random House) General Nonfiction: The Broken Cord, Michael Dorris (Harper & Row) Biography/Autobiography: A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt, Geoffrey C. Ward (Harper & Row) Poetry: Transparent Gestures, Rodney Jones (Houghton Mifflin) Criticism: Not by Fact Alone: Essays on the Writing and Reading of History, John Clive (Knopf) 1988 Fiction: The Middleman and Other Stories, Bharati Mukherjee (Crest Press) General Nonfiction: Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63, Taylor Branch (Simon & Schuster) Biography/Autobiography: Oscar Wilde, Richard Ellman (Knopf) Poetry: That One Day, Donald Hall (Houghton Mifflin) Criticism: Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author, Clifford Geertz (Stanford University Press) 1987 Fiction: The Counterlife, Philip Roth (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) General Nonfiction: The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes (Simon & Schuster) Biography/Autobiography: Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World, Donald R. Howard (Abrahams/Dutton) Poetry: Flesh and Blood, C.K. Williams (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Criticism: Dance Writings, Edwin Denby, edited by Robert Cornfield and William MacKay (Knopf) 1986 Fiction: Kate Vaiden, Reynolds Price (Atheneum) General Nonfiction: War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, John W. Dower (Pantheon) Biography/Autobiography: Tombee: Portrait of a Cotton Planter, Theodore Rosengarten (Morrow) Poetry: Wild Gratitude, Edward Hirsch (Knopf) Criticism: Less Than One: Selected Essays, Joseph Brodsky (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) 1985 Fiction: The Accidental Tourist, Anne Tyler (Knopf) General Nonfiction: Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families, J. Anthony Lukas (Knopf) Biography/Autobiography: Henry James: A Life, Leon Edel (Harper & Row) Poetry: The Triumph of Achilles, Louise Gluck (Ecco Press) Criticism: Habitations of the Word: Essays, William H. Gass (Simon & Schuster) 1984 Fiction: Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich (Holt, Reinhart & Winston) General Nonfiction: Weapons and Hope, Freeman Dyson (Harper & Row) Biography/Autobiography: Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850-1859, Joseph Frank (Princeton University Press) Poetry: The Dead and the Living, Sharon Olds (Knopf) Criticism: Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry, Robert Hass (Ecco Press) 1983 Fiction: Ironweed, William Kennedy (Viking) General Nonfiction: The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House, Seymour M. Hersch (Summit Books) Biography/Autobiography: Minor Characters, Joyce Johnson (Houghton Mifflin) Poetry: The Changing Light at Sandover, James Merrill (Antheneum) Criticism: Hugging the Shore: Essays and Criticism, John Updike (Knopf) 1982 Fiction: George Mills, Stanley Elkin (E.P. Dutton) General Nonfiction: The Path of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Robert Caro (Knopf) Poetry: Antarctic Traveler, Katha Pollitt (Knopf) Criticism: The Second American Revolution and Other Essays, Gore Vidal (Random House) 1981 Fiction: Rabbit Is Rich, John Updike (Knopf) General Nonfiction: The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould (Norton) Poetry: A Coast of Trees, A.R. Ammons (Norton) Criticism: A Virgil Thomson Reader, Virgil Thomson (Houghton Mifflin) Topics: Awards,