National Book Award Finalists

Not that anyone cares in our so-called texting- and- short- attention- span- lemme- read "Superhead" -and- watch -Tyler Perry culture, but here are the nominees. Bravo to all, especial Peter (Mr. Matthiessen), Annette, Drew--

Fiction:

Aleksandar Hemon, “The Lazarus Project” (Riverhead)
Rachel Kushner, “Telex from Cuba” (Scribner)
Peter Matthiessen, “Shadow Country” (Modern Library)
Marilynne Robinson, “Home” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Salvatore Scibona, “The End” (Graywolf Press)

Nonfiction:

Drew Gilpin Faust, “This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War” (Alfred A. Knopf)
Annette Gordon-Reed, “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family” (W.W. Norton & Company)
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)

Poetry:

Frank Bidart, “Watching the Spring Festival” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Mark Doty, “Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems” (HarperCollins)
Reginald Gibbons, “Creatures of a Day” (Louisiana State University Press)
Richard Howard, “Without Saying” (Turtle Point Press)
Patricia Smith, “Blood Dazzler” (Coffee House Press)

Young People’s Literature:

Laurie Halse Anderson, “Chains” (Simon & Schuster)
Kathi Appelt, “The Underneath” (Atheneum)
Judy Blundell, “What I Saw and How I Lied” (Scholastic)
E. Lockhart, “The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks” (Hyperion)
Tim Tharp, “The Spectacular Now” (Alfred A. Knopf)