WRae Armantrout is an American poet generally associated with the Language poets. She has published ten books of poetry and has also been featured in a number of major anthologies. Armantrout currently teaches at the University of California, San Diego, where she is Professor of Poetry and Poetics. On March 11, 2010, Armantrout was awarded the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award for her book of poetry Versed published by the Wesleyan University Press, which had also been nominated for the National Book Award. The book later earned the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She is the recipient of numerous other awards for her poetry, including an award in poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2007 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008.
WBacklash: The Undeclared War Against American Women is a 1991 book by Susan Faludi, in which the author presents evidence demonstrating the existence of a media-driven "backlash" against the feminist advances of the 1970s.
WA Civil Action is a 1995 non-fiction book by Jonathan Harr about a water contamination case in Woburn, Massachusetts, in the 1980s. The book became a best-seller and won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction.
WCommon Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families is a nonfiction book by J. Anthony Lukas, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1985, that examines race relations in Boston, Massachusetts through the prism of desegregation busing. It received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The book traces the history of three families: the working-class African-American Twymons, the working-class Irish McGoffs and the middle-class Yankee Divers. It gives brief genealogical histories of each families, focusing on how the events they went through illuminated Boston history, before narrowing its focus to the racial tension of the 1960s and the 1970s. Through their stories, Common Ground focuses on racial and class conflicts in two Boston neighborhoods—the working-class Irish-American enclave of Charlestown, and the uneasily integrated South End.
Wde Kooning: An American Master is a biography of Dutch American painter Willem de Kooning, a prominent figure in the American movement of abstract expressionism in the thirties and forties. Often compared to Jackson Pollock and Arshile Gorky, de Kooning was considered one of the more inspirational and influential artists of the 20th century. The book, which is the first comprehensive biography presenting both de Kooning's personal life and career, was written by authors by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan. In 2005, the book was honored with the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
WFar From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity is a non-fiction book by Andrew Solomon published in November 2012 in the United States and two months later in the UK, about how families accommodate children with physical, mental and social disabilities and differences.
WFeel Free: Essays is a 2018 book of essays by Zadie Smith. It was published on 8 February 2018 by Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin Books. It has been described as "thoroughly resplendent" by Maria Popova, who writes: "Smith applies her formidable mind in language to subjects as varied as music, the connection between dancing and writing, climate change, Brexit, the nature of joy, and the confusions of personhood in the age of social media."
WGeorge Mills is a 1982 novel by American author Stanley Elkin, published by E. P. Dutton. The novel, set in five parts, tells the family history of succeeding generations of characters named George Mills. The story covers more than 1,000 years from the First Crusade in Europe to the Ottoman Empire to present-day America. Elkin won the 1982 National Book Critics Circle Award in the fiction category for the novel. Elkin mentioned George Mills as one of his favorite novels. The novel is considered Elkin's "longest and most complexly organized work".
WRobert Giroux was an American book editor and publisher. Starting his editing career with Harcourt, Brace & Co., he was hired away to work for Roger W. Straus, Jr. at Farrar & Straus in 1955, where he became a partner and, eventually, its chairman. The firm was henceforth known as Farrar, Straus and Giroux, where he was known by his nickname, "Bob".
WThe Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White, written by historian Henry Wiencek, was published in 1999 by St. Martin’s Press, and won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography.
WHalf a Life is a book by American author Darin Strauss. It received the National Book Critics Circle Award for memoir in 2011.
WKhrushchev: The Man and His Era is a 2003 biography of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Written by William Taubman, the book is the first in-depth and comprehensive American biography of Khrushchev. Taubman was the recipient of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography, as well as the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award. The author spent almost 20 years researching the life of Khrushchev in preparation to write the book. Extensive research was made possible through access to archives in Russia and Ukraine, which were opened to the public following the collapse of the Soviet Union. In addition to printed materials and documentation, he spent time engaging Khrushchev's children and extended relatives, resulting in over 70 personal interviews. Taubman presents a historical narrative and study of the life of Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader who succeeded Joseph Stalin. The book concludes with Khrushchev's death on September 11, 1971.
WLess Than One: Selected Essays is a collection of literary and autobiographical essays by the Russian poet and Nobel Prize-winning author Joseph Brodsky. It was published in 1986 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux and was awarded that year's National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. The book includes essays on fellow Russian writers like Dostoyevsky, Mandelstam, and Platonov, as well as the poet W.H. Auden.
WLove Medicine is Louise Erdrich's debut novel, first published in 1984. Erdrich revised and expanded the novel in subsequent 1993 and 2009 editions. The book follows the lives of five interconnected Ojibwe families living on fictional reservations in Minnesota and North Dakota. The collection of stories in the book spans six decades from the 1930s to the 1980s. Love Medicine garnered critical praise and won numerous awards, including the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award.
WRobert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet. He was born into a Boston Brahmin family that could trace its origins back to the Mayflower. His family, past and present, were important subjects in his poetry. Growing up in Boston also informed his poems, which were frequently set in Boston and the New England region. The literary scholar Paula Hayes believes that Lowell mythologized New England, particularly in his early work.
WMedical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present is a 2007 book by Harriet A. Washington. It is a history of medical experimentation on African Americans. From the era of slavery to the present day, this book presents the first detailed account of black Americans' abuse as unwitting subjects of medical experimentation.
WMetaphysical Dog is the eighth book of collected free verse poems by American poet Frank Bidart. It was published in 2013 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux and won the National Book Critics Circle Award; it was also nominated for the National Book Award in Poetry.
WThe Mismeasure of Man is a 1981 book by paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. The book is both a history and critique of the statistical methods and cultural motivations underlying biological determinism, the belief that “the social and economic differences between human groups—primarily races, classes, and sexes—arise from inherited, inborn distinctions and that society, in this sense, is an accurate reflection of biology”.
WMrs. Ted Bliss is a 1995 novel by American author Stanley Elkin, published by Hyperion Books. It concerns the last eventful years in the life of an old widow. Elkin won the 1995 National Book Critics Circle Award in the fiction category for this work.
WThe National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English". The first NBCC awards were announced and presented January 16, 1976.
WNotes From No Man's Land is a 2009 book of essays by Eula Biss. The book won the 2008 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.
WOn Photography is a 1977 collection of essays by Susan Sontag. It originally appeared as a series of essays in the New York Review of Books between 1973 and 1977.
W"A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide (2002) is a book by American Samantha Power, at that time Professor of Human Rights Practice at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, which explores the United States's understanding of, response to, and inaction on genocides in the 20th century, from the Armenian genocide to the "ethnic cleansings" of the Kosovo War. It won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 2003.
WThe Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War is a 1994 book by Lynn H. Nicholas and a 2006 documentary film. The book explores the Nazi plunder of looted art treasures from occupied countries and the consequences. It covers a range of associated activities: Nazi appropriation and storage, patriotic concealment and smuggling during World War II, discoveries by the Allies, and the extraordinary tasks of preserving, tracking, and returning by the American Monuments officers and their colleagues. Nicholas was awarded the Légion d'Honneur by France.
WThe Reformation: A History is a 2003 history book by the English historian Diarmaid MacCulloch. It is a survey of the European Reformation between 1490 and 1700. It won the 2003 Wolfson History Prize (UK) and the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award (US).
WRough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution is a history book by Simon Schama. It was the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award winner for general nonfiction. A 2007 drama-documentary television programme was based on it.
WSelf-Portrait in a Convex Mirror is a 1975 poetry collection by the American writer John Ashbery. The title, shared with its final poem, comes from the painting of the same name by the Late Renaissance artist Parmigianino. The book won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, the only book to have received all three awards.
WThe Sellout is a 2015 novel by Paul Beatty published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and in the UK by Oneworld Publications in 2016. The novel takes place in and around Los Angeles, California, and concerns a protagonist who grows artisanal marijuana and watermelons. Beatty has stated his motivation for writing the novel was that "[he] was broke".
WThe Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures is a 1997 book by Anne Fadiman that chronicles the struggles of a Hmong refugee family from Houaysouy, Sainyabuli Province, Laos, the Lees, and their interactions with the health care system in Merced, California. In 2005 Robert Entenmann, of St. Olaf College wrote that the book is "certainly the most widely read book on the Hmong experience in America."
WThe Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales is a 1976 book by Bruno Bettelheim, in which the author analyzes fairy tales in terms of Freudian psychoanalysis. The book has been a subject of controversy regarding possible plagiarism.
WVersed is a book of poetry written by Rae Armantrout and published by Wesleyan University Press in 2009. It won the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry after being named a finalist for the National Book Award. Armantrout is only the third poet to win two out of these three awards in one year.
WVoices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster is a book about the Chernobyl disaster by the Belarusian Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich. At the time of the disaster, Alexievich was a journalist living in Minsk, the capital of what was then the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. Alexievich interviewed more than 500 eyewitnesses, including firefighters, liquidators, politicians, physicians, physicists, and ordinary citizens over a period of 10 years. The book relates the psychological and personal tragedy of the Chernobyl accident, and explores the experiences of individuals and how the disaster affected their lives.
WWe Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda is a 1998 non-fiction book by The New Yorker writer Philip Gourevitch about the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which an estimated 1,000,000 Tutsis and Hutus were killed.
WWhite Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide is a 2016 non-fiction book by Emory University professor Carol Anderson. Anderson was contracted to write the book following the reaction to an op-ed she wrote for The Washington Post in 2014.
WGarry Wills is an American author, journalist, and historian, specializing in American history, politics, and religion, especially the history of the Catholic Church. He won a Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1993.
WThe Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts is a book written by Chinese American author Maxine Hong Kingston and published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1976. The book blends autobiography with old Chinese folktales.
WWomen in Their Beds is a short story collection by Gina Berriault. It received the 1996 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 1997 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
WYoung Men and Fire is a non-fiction book written by Norman Maclean. It is an account of Norman Maclean's research of the Mann Gulch fire of 1949 and the 13 men who died there. The fire occurred in Mann Gulch in the Gates of the Mountains Wilderness on August 5. The book won the National Book Critics Circle Award (1992).