Founded in 1974, the NBCC is a nonprofit organization of book reviewers and critics that honors outstanding writing and fosters a national conversation about reading, criticism, and literature, in part through annual awards for the year’s outstanding books. Books are directly nominated and chosen by leading book critics. The NBCC thus offers the unique opportunity for professional critics to recognize and reward literary excellence.

For more information about the National Book Critics Circle and the National Book Critics Circle Awards, go to http://bookcritics.org/.

2010 Winners

Fiction
A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD by Jennifer Egan (Knopf)

Nonfiction
THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS by Isabel Wilkerson (Random House)

Autobiography
HALF A LIFE by Darin Strauss (McSweeney's)

Biography
HOW TO LIVE: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (Other Press)

Poetry
ONE WITH OTHERS: [a little book of her days] by C.D. Wright (Copper Canyon)

Criticism
LYRIC POETRY AND MODERN POLITICS: Russia, Poland, and the West by Clare Cavanagh (Yale University Press)

2010 Finalists

Fiction
A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD by Jennifer Egan (Knopf)
FREEDOM by Jonathan Franzen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
TO THE END OF THE LAND by David Grossman (Knopf)
COMEDY IN A MINOR KEY by Hans Keilson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
SKIPPY DIES by Paul Murray (Faber & Faber)

Nonfiction
NOTHING TO ENVY: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick (Spiegel & Grau)
EMPIRE OF THE SUMMER MOON: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in America by S.C. Gwynne (Scribner)
APPOLLO’S ANGELS: A History of Ballet by Jennifer Homans (Random House)
THE EMPEROR OF ALL MALADIES: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee (Scribner)
THE WARMTH OF OTHER SONS: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson (Random House)

Autobiography
CROSSING MANDELBAUM GATE: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and the Israelis, 1956-1978 by Kai Bird (Scribner)
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EXECUTION by David Dow (Twelve)
HITCH-22: A Memoir by Christopher Hitchens (Twelve)
HIROSHIMA IN THE MORNING by Rahna Reiko Rizzuto (Feminist Press)
JUST KIDS by Patti Smith (Ecco/HarperCollins)
HALF A LIFE by Darin Strauss (McSweeney’s)

Biography
HOW TO LIVE, OR A LIFE OF MONTAIGNE by Sarah Bakewell (Other Press)
THE SECRET LIVES OF SOMERSET MAUGHAM by Selina Hastings (Random House)
CHARLIE CHAN: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History by Yunte Huang (W.W. Norton & Company)
THE KILLING OF CRAZY HORSE by Thomas Powers (Knopf)
SIMON WISENTHAL: The Lives and Legends by Tom Segev (Doubleday)

Poetry
NOX by Anne Carson (New Directions)
THE ETERNAL CITY by Kathleen Graber (Princeton University Press)
LIGHTHEAD by Terrance Hayes (Penguin Poets)
THE BEST OF IT by Kay Ryan (Grove)
ONE WITH OTHERS: [a little book of her days] by C.D. Wright (Copper Canyon)

Criticism
THE POSSESSED: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
THE PROFESSOR AND OTHER WRITINGS by Terry Castle (Harper/HarperCollins)
LYRIC POETRY AND MODERN POLITICS: Russia, Poland, and the West by Clare Cavanagh (Yale University Press.)
THE CRUEL RADIANCE by Susie Linfield (University of Chicago Press)
VANISHING POINT: Not a Memoir by Ander Monson (Graywolf)

Nona Balkian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing
Parul Sehgal
Sarah L. Courteau
William Deresiewicz
Ruth Franklin
Kathryn Harrison