LibGuides: National Book Awards: 1990s

1990-1999

1990

Winner

Middle Passage by Charles Johnson

Middle Passage by Charles R. Johnson
Call Number: Fiction J661m (Adult Fiction
ISBN: 9780689119682
Publication Date: 1990-07-11
Rutherford Calhoun, a newly freed slave and irrepressible rogue, is lost in the underworld of 1830s New Orleans. Desperate to escape the city’s unscrupulous bill collectors and the pawing hands of a schoolteacher hellbent on marrying him, he jumps aboard the Republic, a slave ship en route to collect members of a legendary African tribe, the Allmuseri. Thus begins a voyage of metaphysical horror and human atrocity, a journey which challenges our notions of freedom, fate and how we live together. Peopled with vivid and unforgettable characters, nimble in its interplay of comedy and serious ideas, this dazzling modern classic is a perfect blend of the picaresque tale, historical romance, sea yarn, slave narrative and philosophical allegory.

Finalists

Chromos by Felipe Alfau
Paradise by Elena Castedo
Dogeaters by Jessica Hagedorn
Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart by Joyce Carol Oates

Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart

Because It Is Bitter and Because It Is My Heart by Joyce Carol Oates
Call Number: Fiction O11ax (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780525248606
Publication Date: 1990-04-30
At the heart of the story are two people, Iris Courtney, who is white, and handsome Jinx Fairchild, the black basketball player who, in protecting Iris, kills a white man. Iris is the only witness to the crime. The two of them are growing up in the early 1950s in a New York industrial town where racial boundaries keep people apart-or bring them together in explosive scenes of fear or desire. The secret link between Iris and Jinx is not only their attraction to each other, but a murder ... and a bond of passion and guilt is formed between them.

Winner

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

Finalists

Small Victories : the Real World of a Teacher, Her Students and Their High School by Samuel G. Freedman
Richard Milhous Nixon : the Rise of an American Politician by Roger Morris
Jackson Pollock : an American Saga by Steven Naifeh
Righteous Pilgrim : the Life and Times of Harold L. Ickes, 1847-1952

Richard Milhous Nixon : the Rise of an American Politician

Richard Milhous Nixon by Roger Morris
Call Number: BIO NIXON RICM M (Adult biographY)
ISBN: 9780805011210
Publication Date: 1989-11-01
Nixon, Richard M. (Richard Milhous), 1913-1994.
United States -- Politics and government -- 1945-1953.
California -- Politics and government -- 1850-1950.

Jackson Pollock : an American Saga

Jackson Pollock : an American saga by Steven Naifeh; Gregory White Smith
Call Number: 759.13 P776n (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780517560846
Publication Date: 1989-12-24
Pollock, Jackson, 1912-1956.
Painters -- United States -- Biography.

1991

Winner

Mating : a Novel by Norman Rush

Mating [Kindle] : a novel by Norman Rush
Call Number: FIC RUSH NOR MA Kindle (Request at circulation desk)
ISBN: 9780307789358
Publication Date: 1992
Set in the African republic of Botswana--the locale of his acclaimed short story collection, Whites--Norman Rush's novel simultaneously explores the highest of intellectual high grounds and the most tortuous ravines of the erotic and tackles the geopolitics of poverty and the mystery of what men and women really want.

Finalists

Wartime Lies by Louis Begley
Frog by Stephen Dixon
The MacGuffin by Stanley Elkin
Beyond Deserving by Sandra Scofield

The MacGuffin

The MacGuffin [Kindle] by Stanley Elkin
Call Number: Kindle-0556
ISBN: 9781453204443
Publication Date: 2010-10-26
Narrates forty hours in the life of Bobbo Druff, City Commissioner of Streets, aged fifty-eight whose ordered world becomes suddenly more complicated.

Winner

Freedom, Volume 1: Freedom in the Making of Western Culture by Orlando Patterson

Finalists

Why Americans Hate Politics by E. J. Dionne, Jr.
Praying for Sheetrock by Melissa Fay Greene
The Jameses : a Family Narrative by R. W. B. Lewis
Anne Sexton : a Biography by Diane Wood Middlebrook

Anne Sexton : a Biography

Anne Sexton by Diane W. Middlebrook
Call Number: BIO SEXTO ANN M (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9780395353622
Publication Date: 1991-09-01
Anne Sexton began writing poetry at the age of twenty-nine to keep from killing herself. She held on to language for dear life and somehow -- in spite of alcoholism and the mental illness that ultimately led her to suicide -- managed to create a body of work that won a Pulitzer Prize and that still sings to thousands of readers. This exemplary biography, which was nominated for the National Book Award, provoked controversy for its revelations of infidelity and incest and its use of tapes from Sexton's psychiatric sessions. It reconciles the many Anne Sextons: the 1950s housewife; the abused child who became an abusive mother; the seductress; the suicide who carried "kill-me pills" in her handbag the way other women carry lipstick; and the poet who transmuted confession into lasting art.

Winner

What Work Is by Philip Levine

Finalists

The Never-Ending by Andrew Hudgins
Eva-Mary by Linda McCarriston
An Atlas of the Difficult World by Adrienne Rich
The Homeplace by Marilyn Nelson Waniek

1992

Winner

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
Call Number: FIC MCART COR B1 (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780679744399
Publication Date: 1993-06-29
The tale of John Grady Cole, who at sixteen finds himself at the end of a long line of Texas ranchers, cut off from the only life he has ever imagined for himself. With two companions, he sets off for Mexico on a sometimes idyllic, sometimes comic journey to a place where dreams are paid for in blood.

Finalists

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia
Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones
Outerbridge Reach by Robert Stone

Bastard Out of Carolina

Bastard Out of Carolina [Kindle] by Dorothy Allison
Call Number: Kindle-0385
ISBN: 9780525934257
Publication Date: 1992-04-30
Bone, an illegitimate child in a family of social outcasts, sees her mother's happiness with her new husband and will not tell when the stepfather begins abusing her in the 1950s.

Dreaming in Cuban

Dreaming in Cuban [Kindle] by Cristina García
Call Number: Kindle-0583
ISBN: 9780679408833
Publication Date: 1992-03-03
The story of a family divided politically and geographically by the Cuban revolution.

Outerbridge Reach

Outerbridge Reach by Robert Stone
Call Number: Fiction S879o (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780395587812
Publication Date: 1992-03-16
Now in his early forties, Annapolis graduate and Vietnam vet Owen Browne sees his final chance for greatness in an upcoming yacht race.

Winner

Becoming a Man : Half a Life Story by Paul Monette

Finalists

The Promise of the New South : Lie After Reconstruction by Edward L. Ayers
Genius : the Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick
Truman by David McCullough
Lincoln at Gettysburg by Garry Wills

Genius : the Life and Science of Richard Feynman

Genius : the life and science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick
Call Number: 530 F435gL (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780679408369
Publication Date: 1992-09-29
Feynman, Richard Phillips.
Physics -- History -- 20th century.
Physicists -- United States -- Biography.

Truman

Truman by David McCullough
Call Number: BIO TRUMA HARS M (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9780671456542
Publication Date: 1992-06-15
The life of Harry S. Truman is one of the greatest of American stories, filled with vivid characters—Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Eleanor Roosevelt, Bess Wallace Truman, George Marshall, Joe McCarthy, and Dean Acheson—and dramatic events. In this riveting biography, acclaimed historian David McCullough not only captures the man—a more complex, informed, and determined man than ever before imagined—but also the turbulent times in which he rose, boldly, to meet unprecedented challenges. The last president to serve as a living link between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, Truman’s story spans the raw world of the Missouri frontier, World War I, the powerful Pendergast machine of Kansas City, the legendary Whistle-Stop Campaign of 1948, and the decisions to drop the atomic bomb, confront Stalin at Potsdam, send troops to Korea, and fire General MacArthur. Drawing on newly discovered archival material and extensive interviews with Truman’s own family, friends, and Washington colleagues, McCullough tells the deeply moving story of the seemingly ordinary “man from Missouri” who was perhaps the most courageous president in our history.

Lincoln at Gettysburg

Lincoln at Gettysburg : the words that remade America by Garry Wills
Call Number: 973.7349 W741L (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780671867423
Publication Date: 1993-06-12
The power of words has rarely been given a more compelling demonstration than in the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln was asked to memorialize the gruesome battle. Instead he gave the whole nation “a new birth of freedom” in the space of a mere 272 words. His entire life and previous training and his deep political experience went into this, his revolutionary masterpiece. By examining both the address and Lincoln in their historical moment and cultural frame, Wills breathes new life into words we thought we knew, and reveals much about a president so mythologized but often misunderstood. Wills shows how Lincoln came to change the world and to effect an intellectual revolution, how his words had to and did complete the work of the guns, and how Lincoln wove a spell that has not yet been broken.

Winner

New and Selected Poems, Volume One by Mary Oliver

Finalists

Collected Shorter Poems by Hayden Carruth
The Wild Iris by Louise Glück
Rapture by Susan Mitchell
No Nature by Gary Snyder

The Wild Iris

The Wild Iris by Louise Glück
Call Number: 811.54 G576w (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780880012812
Publication Date: 1992-07-01
American poetry -- 20th century.

1993

Winner

The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx; B. Grossman (Editor)
Call Number: FIC PROUL ANN SH (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780684193373
Publication Date: 1993-03-02
Quoyle, a third-rate newspaper hack, with a “head shaped like a crenshaw, no neck, reddish hair...features as bunched as kissed fingertips,” is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife meets her just desserts. An aunt convinces Quoyle and his two emotionally disturbed daughters to return with her to the starkly beautiful coastal landscape of their ancestral home in Newfoundland. Here, on desolate Quoyle’s Point, in a house empty except for a few mementos of the family’s unsavory past, the battered members of three generations try to cobble up new lives.

Finalists

Come to Me by Amy Bloom
The Pugilist at Rest by Thom Jones
Operation Wandering Soul by Richard Powers
Swimming the Volcano by Bob Shacochis

Winner

United States Essays 1952-1992 by Gore Vidal

Finalists

Land of Desire : Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture by WIlliam Leach
W. E. B. Du Bois : Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 by David Levering Lewis
Gunfighter Nation : the Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America by Richard Slotkins
Battlefield : Farming a Civil War Battleground by Peter Svenson

Winner

Garbage by A. R. Ammons

Finalists

My Alexandria by Mark Doty
The Vigil : a Poem in Four Voices by Margaret Gibson
The Museum of Clear Ideas by Donald Hall
What We Don't Know About Each Other by Lawrence Raab

1994

Winner

A Frolic of His Own : a Novel by William Gaddis

Finalists

Moses Supposes by Ellen Currie
White Man's Grave by Richard Dooling
The Bird Artist by Howard Norman
The Collected Stories by Grace Paley

The Collected Stories

The Collected Stories [Kindle] by Grace Paley
Call Number: Kindle-830
ISBN: 9781466884014
Publication Date: 2014-10-07
This reissue of Grace Paley's classic collection'a finalist for the National Book Award'demonstrates her rich use of language as well as her extraordinary insight into and compassion for her characters, moving from the hilarious to the tragic and back again. Whether writing about the love (and conflict) between parents and children or between husband and wife, or about the struggles of aging single mothers or disheartened political organizers to make sense of the world, she brings the same unerring ear for the rhythm of life as it is actually lived. The Collected Stories is a 1994 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction.

Winner

How We Die : Reflections on Life's Final Chapter by Sherwin B. Nuland

How We Die : reflections on life's final chapter by Sherwin B. Nuland
Call Number: 616.07 N969h (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780679414612
Publication Date: 1994-01-25
Death.

Finalists

The Unredeemed Captive : a Family Story from Early America by John Demos
Strange Justice : the Selling of Clarence Thomas by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson
Fatheralong : a Meditation on Fathers, Sons, Race and Society by John Edgar Wideman
In Pharaoh's Army : Memories of the Lost War by Tobias Wolff

Strange Justice : the Selling of Clarence Thomas

Strange Justice : the selling of Clarence Thomas by Jane Mayer
Call Number: 347.73 M464s (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780395633182
Publication Date: 1994-11-01
Charged with racial, sexual, and political overtones, the confirmation of Clarence Thomas as a Supreme Court justice was one of the most divisive spectacles the country has ever seen. Anita Hill's accusation of sexual harassment by Thomas, and the attacks on her that were part of his high-placed supporters rebuttal, both shocked the nation and split it into two camps. One believed Hill was lying, the other believed that the man who ultimately took his place on the Supreme Court had committed perjury. In this brilliant, often shocking book, Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson, two of the nation's top investigative journalists, examine all aspects of this controversial case. They interview witnesses that the Judiciary Committee chose not to call and present documents never before made public. They detail the personal and professional pasts of both Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill and lay bare a campaign of lobbying, public relations, and character assassination fueled by conservative power at its most desperate. A gripping high-stakes drama, Strange Justice is not only a definitive account of the Clarence Thomas nomination hearings but is also a classic casebook of how the Washington game is played by those for whom winning is everything.

Winner

Worshipful Company of Fletchers by James Tate

Finalists

Like Most Revelations by Richard Howard
A Study for the World's Body by David St. John
Hinge and Sign : Poems, 1968-1993 by Heather McHugh
An Altogether Different Language by Anne Porter

1995

Winner

Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth

Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth
Call Number: Fiction R845s (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780395739822
Publication Date: 1995-09-12
He is relentlessly defiant. He is exceedingly libidinous. His appetite for the outrageous is insatiable. He is Mickey Sabbath, the aging, raging powerhouse whose savage effrontery and mocking audacity are at the heart of Philip Roth's astonishing new novel. Sabbath's Theater tells Mickey's story in the wake of the death of his mistress, an erotic free spirit whose adulterous daring exceeds even his own. Once a scandalously inventive puppeteer, Mickey is now in his mid-sixties and besieged by ghosts - of his mother, his beloved brother, his vanished first wife, his mistress of thirteen years. Bereft and grieving, he embarks on a turbulent journey back into his past, one that brings him to the brink of madness and extinction. But no matter how ardently he courts death, he is too exuberantly alive to succeed at dying. Sabbath's Theater is a comic creation of epic proportions, and Mickey Sabbath is its gargantuan hero.

Finalists

All Souls' Rising by Madison Smart Bell
Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat
Interstate by Stephen Dixon
The House on the Lagoon by Rosario Ferré

Interstate

Interstate by Stephen Dixon
Call Number: Fiction D6213i (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780805026542
Publication Date: 1995-05-01
A father mentally replays, in eight variations, the shooting of his daughters on an interstate highway.

Winner

The Haunted Land : Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism by Tina Rosenberg

The Haunted Land : facing Europe's ghosts after communism by Tina Rosenberg
Call Number: 947 R813h (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780679744993
Publication Date: 1996-03-19
Post-communism -- Europe, Eastern.
Political persecution -- Europe, Eastern -- History -- 20th century.
Europe, Eastern -- History -- 1989-

Finalists

Salvation on Sand Mountain : Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia by Dennis Covington
Darwin's Dangerous Idea : Evolution and the Meaning of Life by Daniel C. Dennett
A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr
Ghosts of Mississippi by Maryanne Vollers

Darwin's Dangerous Idea : Evolution and the Meanings of Life

Darwin's Dangerous Idea : evolution and the meanings of life by Daniel Clement Dennett
Call Number: 146.7 D399d (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780684802909
Publication Date: 1995-05-10
Natural selection.
Evolution (Biology) -- Philosophy.
Human evolution -- Philosophy.

Winner

Passing Through : the Later Poems New and Selected by Stanley Kunitz

Finalists

Collected Poems, 1945-1990 by Barbara Howes
In the Crevice of Time : New and Collected Poems by Josephine Jacobsen
New and Selected Poems by Donald Justice
New and Selected Poems by Gary Soto

1996

Winner

Ship Fever and Other Stories by Andrea Barrett

Finalists

Atticus by Ron Hansen
The Giant's House by Elizabeth McCracken
Martin Dressler : the Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser
The River Beyond the World by Janet Peery

Atticus

Atticus [Kindle] by Ron Hansen
Call Number: Kindle-0627
ISBN: 9780060182175
Publication Date: 1996-02-01
Colorado rancher Atticus Cody receives word that his wayward younger son, Scott, has committed suicide in Resurrection, Mexico. When Atticus travels south to recover Scott's body, he is puzzled by what he finds there and begins to suspect murder. Illuminating those often obscure chambers of the human heart,

The Giant's House

The Giant's House [Kindle] by Elizabeth McCracken
Call Number: Kindle-0766
ISBN: 9780307833488
Publication Date: 2013
The year is 1950, and in a small town on Cape Cod twenty-six-year-old librarian Peggy Cort feels like love and life have stood her up. Until the day James Carlson Sweatt'the "over-tall" eleven-year-old boy who's the talk of the town'walks into her library and changes her life forever. Two misfits whose lonely paths cross at the circulation desk, Peggy and James are odd candidates for friendship, but nevertheless they soon find their lives entwined in ways that neither one could have predicted. In James, Peggy discovers the one person who's ever really understood her, and as he grows'six foot five at age twelve, then seven feet, then eight'so does her heart and their most singular romance.

Martin Dressler : the Tale of an American Dreamer

Martin Dressler : the tale of an American dreamer by Steven Millhauser
Call Number: Fiction M654m (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780679781271
Publication Date: 1997-03-25
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award Finalist. Young Martin Dressler begins his career as an industrious helper in his father's cigar store. In the course of his restless young manhood, he makes a swift and eventful rise to the top, accompanied by two sisters--one a dreamlike shadow, the other a worldly business partner. As the eponymous Martin's vision becomes bolder and bolder he walks a haunted line between fantasy and reality, madness and ambition, art and industry, a sense of doom builds piece-by-hypnotic piece until this mesmerizing journey into the heart of an American dreamer reaches its bitter-sweet conclusion.

Winner

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

Finalists

The Temple Bombing by Melissa Fay Greene
The Living and the Dead by Paul Hendrickson
The Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller : Worlds to Conquer, 1908-1958 by Cary Reich
Fruitful : a Real Mother in the Modern World by Anne Roiphe

Winner

Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey by Hayden Carruth

Finalists

The Terrible Stories by Lucille Clifton
Sun Under Wood by Robert Hass
The Crack in Everything by Alicia Suskin Ostriker
Walking the Black Cat by Charles Simic

Winner

Parrot in the Oven : Mi Vida : a Novel by Victor Martinez

Parrot in the Oven : mi vida : a novel by Victor Martinez (As told to)
Call Number: J-Fiction MA (Juvenile Fiction)
ISBN: 9780060267063
Publication Date: 1996-10-30
Manny relates his coming of age experiences as a member of a poor Mexican American family in which the alcoholic father only adds to everyone's struggle.

Finalists

What Jamie Saw by Carolyn Corman
A Girl Named Disaster by Nancy Farmer
The Long Season of Rain by Helen Kim
Send Me Down a Miracle by Han Nolan

What Jamie Saw

What Jamie Saw by Carolyn Coman
Call Number: J-Fiction CO (Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 9781886910027
Publication Date: 1995-10-16
Having fled to a family friend's hillside trailer after his mother's boyfriend tried to throw his baby sister against a wall, nine-year-old Jamie finds himself living an existence full of uncertainty and fear.

A Girl Named Disaster

A Girl Named Disaster by Nancy Farmer
Call Number: J-Fiction FA (Juvenile Fiction)
ISBN: 9780545356626
Publication Date: 2012-01-01
While fleeing from Mozambique to Zimbabwe to escape an unwanted marriage, Nhamo, an eleven-year-old Shona girl, struggles to escape drowning and starvation and in so doing comes close to the luminous world of the African spirits.

1997

Winner

Cold Mountain : a Novel by Charles Frazier

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
Call Number: FIC FRAZI CHA CO (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780871136794
Publication Date: 1997-05-16
Sorely wounded and fatally disillusioned in the fighting at Petersburg, a Confederate soldier named Inman decides to walk back to his home in the Blue Ridge mountains to Ada, the woman he loves. His trek across the disintegrating South brings him into intimate and sometimes lethal converse with slaves and marauders, bounty hunters and witches, both helpful and malign. At the same time, the intrepid Ada is trying to revive her father’s derelict farm and learning to survive in a world where the old certainties have been swept away.

Finalists

Underworld by Don DeLillo
Le Divorce by Diane Johnson
Echo House by Ward Just
The Puttermesser Papers by Cynthia Ozick

Underworld

Underworld by Don DeLillo
Call Number: FIC DELIL DON UN (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780684842691
Publication Date: 1997-10-03
Underworld is about the second half of the twentieth century in America and about two people, an artist and an executive, whose lives intertwine in New York in the fifties and again in the nineties. With cameo appearances by Lenny Bruce, J. Edgar Hoover, Bobby Thompson, Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason and Toots Shor.

Winner

American Sphinx : the Character of Thomas Jefferson by Joseph J. Ellis

American Sphinx [E-Book] : the character of Thomas Jefferson by Joseph J. Ellis
Call Number: BIO JEFFE THO E Ebook (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9780375727467
Publication Date: 1998-11-19
Following Thomas Jefferson from the drafting of the Declaration of Independence to his retirement in Monticello, Joseph J. Ellis unravels the contradictions of the Jeffersonian character. He gives us the slave holding libertarian who was capable of decrying miscegenation while maintaining an intimate relationship with his slave, Sally Hemmings; the enemy of government power who exercised it audaciously as president; the visionary who remained curiously blind to the inconsistencies in his nature. American Sphinx is a marvel of scholarship, a delight to read, and an essential gloss on the Jeffersonian legacy.

Finalists

The Kidnapping of Edgardo Martara by David I. Kertzer
My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid
The Undertaking : Life Studies from the Dismal Trade by Thomas Lynch
Whittaker Chambers by Sam Tanenhaus

Winner

Effort and Speech : New and Selected Poems by William Meredith

Finalists

Locusts at the Edge of Summer : New and Selected Poems by John Balaban
Desire by Frank Bidart
Primate Behavior by Sarah Lindsay
The Fields of Praise : New and Selected Poems by Marilyn Nelson

Winner

Dancing on the Edge by Han Nolan

Dancing on the Edge by Han Nolan
Call Number: J-Fiction NO (Juvenile Fiction)
ISBN: 9780152016487
Publication Date: 1997-10-01
A young girl from a dysfunctional family creates for herself an alternative world that nearly results in her death but that ultimately leads her to reality.

Finalists

The Facts Speak for Themselves by Brock Cole
Sons of Liberty by Adele Griffin
Where You Belong by Mary Ann McGuigan
Mean Margaret by Tor Seidler

Mean Margaret

Mean Margaret by Tor Seidler
Call Number: J-Fiction SE (Juvenile Fiction)
Publication Date: 1997
Margaret is a mean, cranky human toddler from a family of nine. She is such a pain that her beleaguered parents chuck her out, and she's on her own, grousing and grumping until two caring woodchucks, Phoebe and Fred, take Margaret in as their own. But despite their love, Margaret continues to wreak havoc with her loud, destructive ways, ruining the burrow and shrieking nonstop. Soon the woodchucks are as beleaguered as Margaret's human parents were, but because love is more powerful than temper tantrums, they are determined to make it work. So they enlist a little unconventional help, and with the guidance of a snake, bats, and a skunk, their feral little human just might realize there's more to life than being mean.

1998

Winner

Charming Billy by Alice McDermott

Charming Billy by Alice McDermott
Call Number: Fiction M47187c (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780374120801
Publication Date: 1997-12-31
Alice McDermott tells the story of Billy Lynch within the complex matrix of a tightly knit Irish American community, in a voice that is resonant and full of deep feeling. Charming Billy is a masterpiece about the unbreakable bonds of memory and desire.

Finalists

Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman
The Healing by Gayl Jones
Damascus Gate by Robert Stone
A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe

Damascus Gate

Damascus Gate by Robert Stone
Call Number: Fiction S879c (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780395665695
Publication Date: 1998-05-14
American journalist Christopher Lucas has arrived in the Middle East to research the phenomenon known as Jerusalem Syndrome—a religious psychosis among tourists who become so overwhelmed by the Holy Land that they erupt in a sometimes dangerous mania. A rationalist outsider navigating an insular world of increasing hysteria, Lucas at first seems immune. But soon his own obsession for Jewish jazz singer Sonia Barnes draws him deeper into the fanatical cult, and into a very real and immediate threat: a plot to hasten the coming of the Messiah by blowing up the Muslim shrines in the Temple Mount. Now, swirling around Lucas in an apocalyptic undertow are Communist revolutionaries, Palestinian terrorists, Hamas agents, fundamentalist Christians, right-wing fanatics, a duplicitous Israeli secret agent, a ruthless soldier of fortune, a strung-out Kabbalist, and Sonia herself. Each one is complicit in a conspiracy that will drive Lucas from the riot-filled streets to an underground maze, where he uncovers the duplicity and depravity on all sides of Jerusalem’s struggle.

A Man in Full

A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe
Call Number: Fiction W8556m (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780374270322
Publication Date: 1998-11-12
he setting is Atlanta, Georgia--a racially mixed late-century boomtown full of fresh wealth, avid speculators, and worldly-wise politicians. The protagonist is Charles Croker, once a college football star, now a late-middle-aged Atlanta real-estate entrepreneur turned conglomerate king, whose expansionist ambitions and outsize ego have at last hit up against reality. Charlie has a 28,000-acre quail-shooting plantation, a young and demanding second wife--and a half-empty office tower with a staggering load of debt. When star running back Fareek Fanon--the pride of one of Atlanta's grimmest slums--is accused of raping an Atlanta blueblood's daughter, the city's delicate racial balance is shattered overnight.

Winner

Slaves in the Family by Edward Ball

Slaves in the Family by Robert Edward Ball
Call Number: 975.7 B187s (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780374265823
Publication Date: 1998-01-01
Ball family.
Plantation life -- South Carolina -- Charleston Region -- History.
Slaves -- South Carolina -- Charleston Region -- History.
Slaveholders -- South Carolina -- Charleston Region -- History.
African-Americans -- South Carolina -- Charleston Region -- History.
Charleston Region (S.C.) -- Race relations.
Charleston Region (S.C.) -- Biography.

Finalists

Shakespeare : the Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom
There Once Was a World : a 900-Year Chronicle of the Shtetle of Eishyshok by Yaffa Eliach
A Slant of Sun : One Child's Courage by Beth Kephart
All on Fire : William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery by Henry Mayer

Shakespeare : the Invention of the Human

Shakespeare : the invention of the human by Harold Bloom
Call Number: 822.33M B655s (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9781573221207
Publication Date: 1998-10-26
Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Characters.
Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Knowledge -- Psychology.
Characters and characteristics in literature.
Drama -- Psychological aspects.
Personality in literature.
Humanism in literature.

Winner

This Time : New and Selected Poems by Gerald Stern

Finalists

The Art of the Lathe by B. H. Fairchild
The Little Space : Poems Selected and New, 1968-1998 by Alicia Suskin Ostriker
Carnival Evening by Linda Pastan
From the Devotions by Carl Phillips

Winner

Holes by Louis Sachar

Holes by Louis Sachar
Call Number: J-Fiction SA (Juvenile Fiction)
ISBN: 9780374332655
Publication Date: 1998-08-20
As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.

Finalists

The Secret Life of Amanda Woods by Ann Cameron
Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key by Jack Gantos
No Pretty Pictures : a Child of War by Anita Lobel
A Long Way from Chicago : a Novel in Stories by Richard Peck

Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key

Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key by Jack Gantos
Call Number: J-Fiction GA (Juvenile Fiction)
ISBN: 9780374336646
Publication Date: 1998-10-14
Joey has trouble paying attention or controlling his mood swings when his prescription meds wear off and he starts getting worked up and acting wired. Sequel: Joey Pigza loses control.
Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key [CD] by Jack Gantos (Read by)
Call Number: J-CD Fiction GA (Juvenile Audiobook CD)
ISBN: 9780739381137
Publication Date: 2009-05-26

A Long Way from Chicago : a Novel in Stories

A Long Way from Chicago by Richard Peck
Call Number: J-Fiction PE L1 (Juvenile Fiction)
ISBN: 9780803722903
Publication Date: 1998-09-01
A boy recounts his annual summer trips to rural Illinois with his sister during the Great Depression to visit their larger-than-life grandmother.
A Long Way from Chicago [CD] by Richard Peck; Ron McLarty (Read by)
Call Number: J-CD Fiction PE L1 (Juvenile Audiobook CD)
ISBN: 9780307243201
Publication Date: 2005-05-10

1999

Winner

Waiting by Ha Jin

Finalists

Plainsong by Kent Haruf
Hummingbird House by Patricia Henley
House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
Who Do You Love by Jean Thompson

Plainsong

Plainsong [Kindle] by Kent Haruf
Call Number: Kindle-0631 (Circulation Desk)
ISBN: 9780375406188
Publication Date: 1999-09-21
In the small town of Holt, Colorado, a high school teacher is confronted with raising his two boys alone after their mother retreats first to the bedroom, then altogether. A teenage girl—her father long since disappeared, her mother unwilling to have her in the house—is pregnant, alone herself, with nowhere to go. And out in the country, two brothers, elderly bachelors, work the family homestead, the only world they've ever known. From these unsettled lives emerges a vision of life, and of the town and landscape that bind them together—their fates somehow overcoming the powerful circumstances of place and station, their confusion, curiosity, dignity and humor intact and resonant. As the milieu widens to embrace fully four generations, Kent Haruf displays an emotional and aesthetic authority to rival the past masters of a classic American tradition.

House of Sand and Fog

House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus
Call Number: Fiction D821h (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780393046977
Publication Date: 1999-02-17
A recent immigrant from the Middle East—a former colonel in the Iranian Air Force—yearns to restore his family’s dignity in California. A recovering alcoholic and addict down on her luck struggles to hold onto the one thing she has left her home. And her lover, a married cop, is driven to extremes to win her love.

Winner

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

Embracing Defeat : Japan in the wake of World War II by John W. Dower
Call Number: 952.04 D746e (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780393046861
Publication Date: 1999-03-17
Japan -- History -- 1945-

Finalists

Woman : an Intimate Geography by Natalie Angier
Black Hawk Down : a Story of Modern War by Mark Bowden
Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation by John Phillip Santos
Secrets of the Flesh : a Life of Colette by Judith Thurman

Winner

Vice : New and Selected Poems by Ai

Finalists

Vita Nova by Louise Glück
Configurations : New and Selected Poems, 1958-1998
The Pilot Star Elegies by Sherod Santos
Repair by C. K. Williams

Repair

Repair by C. K. Williams
Call Number: 811.54 W722r (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780374249328
Publication Date: 1999-06-01
American poetry -- 20th century.

Winner

When Zachary Beaver Came to Town by Kimberly Willis Holt

When Zachary Beaver Came to Town by Kimberly Willis Holt
Call Number: J-Fiction HO (Juvenile Fiction)
ISBN: 9780805061161
Publication Date: 1999-10-15
During the summer of 1971 in a small Texas town, thirteen-year-old Toby and his best friend Cal meet the star of a sideshow act, 600-pound Zachary, the fattest boy in the world.

Finalists

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich
The Trolls by Polly Horvath
Monster by Walter Dean Myers

Speak

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson; L. Anderson
Call Number: J-Fiction AN (Juvenile Fiction)
ISBN: 9780374371524
Publication Date: 1999-10-22
A traumatic event near the end of the summer has a devastating effect on Melinda's freshman year in high school.
Speak [CD] by Laurie Halse Anderson; Mandy Siegfried (Read by)
Call Number: J-CD Fiction AN (Juvenile Fiction)
ISBN: 9780739336724
Publication Date: 2006-11-14

The Birchbark House

The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich (Illustrator)
Call Number: Juv F ERD
ISBN: 9780786803002
Publication Date: 1999-07-21
Omakayas, a seven-year-old Native American girl of the Ojibwa tribe, lives through the joys of summer and the perils of winter on an island in Lake Superior in 1847.

The Trolls

The Trolls by Polly Horvath
Call Number: J-Fiction HO (Juvenile Fiction)
ISBN: 9780312384197
Publication Date: 2008-09-30
Eccentric Aunt Sally comes from Canada to babysit the Anderson children while their parents are on a trip to Paris and every night the bedtime story adds another piece to a very suspect family history.

Monster

Monster by Walter Dean Myers; Christopher A. Myers (Illustrator)
Call Number: J-Fiction MY (Juvenile Fiction)
ISBN: 9780060280772
Publication Date: 1999-04-21
While on trial as an accomplice to a murder, sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records his experiences in prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script.

National Book Awards

1990

Winner

Middle Passage by Charles Johnson

Finalists

Chromos by Felipe Alfau

Paradise by Elena Castedo

Dogeaters by Jessica Hagedorn

Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart by Joyce Carol Oates

Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart

Winner

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

Finalists

Small Victories : the Real World of a Teacher, Her Students and Their High School by Samuel G. Freedman

Richard Milhous Nixon : the Rise of an American Politician by Roger Morris

Jackson Pollock : an American Saga by Steven Naifeh

Righteous Pilgrim : the Life and Times of Harold L. Ickes, 1847-1952

Richard Milhous Nixon : the Rise of an American Politician

Jackson Pollock : an American Saga

1991

Winner

Mating : a Novel by Norman Rush

Finalists

Wartime Lies by Louis Begley

Frog by Stephen Dixon

The MacGuffin by Stanley Elkin

Beyond Deserving by Sandra Scofield

The MacGuffin

Winner

Freedom, Volume 1: Freedom in the Making of Western Culture by Orlando Patterson

Finalists

Why Americans Hate Politics by E. J. Dionne, Jr.

Praying for Sheetrock by Melissa Fay Greene

The Jameses : a Family Narrative by R. W. B. Lewis

Anne Sexton : a Biography by Diane Wood Middlebrook

Anne Sexton : a Biography

Winner

What Work Is by Philip Levine

Finalists

The Never-Ending by Andrew Hudgins

Eva-Mary by Linda McCarriston

An Atlas of the Difficult World by Adrienne Rich

The Homeplace by Marilyn Nelson Waniek

1992

Winner

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

Finalists

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia

Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones

Outerbridge Reach by Robert Stone

Bastard Out of Carolina

Dreaming in Cuban

Outerbridge Reach

Winner

Becoming a Man : Half a Life Story by Paul Monette

Finalists

The Promise of the New South : Lie After Reconstruction by Edward L. Ayers

Genius : the Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick

Truman by David McCullough

Lincoln at Gettysburg by Garry Wills

Genius : the Life and Science of Richard Feynman

Truman

Lincoln at Gettysburg

Winner

New and Selected Poems, Volume One by Mary Oliver

Finalists

Collected Shorter Poems by Hayden Carruth

The Wild Iris by Louise Glück

Rapture by Susan Mitchell

No Nature by Gary Snyder

The Wild Iris

1993

Winner

The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx

Finalists

Come to Me by Amy Bloom

The Pugilist at Rest by Thom Jones

Operation Wandering Soul by Richard Powers

Swimming the Volcano by Bob Shacochis