Annal:1999 National Book Award for Nonfiction
From AwardAnnals
Results of the National Book Award in the year 1999. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II
- 2000 Pulitzer–Nonfiction winner
- 1999 LATimes–History winner
- 1999 NBA–Nonfiction winner
- 1999 Kiriyama-Nonfiction finalist
- 1999 NBCC–Nonfiction finalist
- Score: 42.5
The first definitive history of the transformation of Japanese society under American occupation after World War II. This major new work by America’s foremost historian of modern Japan draws on a vast range of Japanese sources to offer an extraordinarily thorough, complex, and rich analysis of how shattering defeat in World War II followed by over six years of military occupation by the United States affected every level of Japanese society-in ways that neither the victor nor the vanquished could anticipate. Here is the history of an extraordinary moment in the…
- 1999 NBA–Nonfiction finalist
- Score: 6.49
With the clarity, insight, and sheer exuberance of language that make her one of The New York Times’s premier stylists, Pulitzer Prize-winner Natalie Angier lifts the veil of secrecy from that most enigmatic of evolutionary masterpieces, the female body. Angier takes readers on a mesmerizing tour of female anatomy and physiology that explores everything from organs to orgasm, and delves into topics such as exercise, menopause, and the mysterious properties of breast milk.
A self-proclaimed “scientific fantasia of womanhood.” Woman ultimately…
Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War
- 1999 LATimes–Current Interest finalist
- 1999 NBA–Nonfiction finalist
- Score: 12.49
The acclaimed New York Times bestseller Black Hawk Down is “a shocking account of modern warfare . . . gripping and horrifying” (San Francisco Chronicle)
Destined to become a classic of war reporting, Black Hawk Down is Mark Bowden’s brilliant account of the longest sustained firefight involving American troops since the Vietnam War. On October 3rd, 1993, about a hundred elite U.S. soldiers were dropped by helicopter into the teeming market in the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia. Their mission was to abduct two top lieutenants of a…
Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation
- 1999 NBA–Nonfiction finalist
- Score: 6.49
In this beautifully wrought memoir, award-winning writer John Philip Santos weaves together dream fragments, family remembrances, and Chicano mythology, reaching back into time and place to blend the story of one Mexican family with the soul of an entire people. The story unfolds through a pageant of unforgettable family figures: from Madrina—touched with epilepsy and prophecy ever since, as a girl, she saw a dying soul leave its body—to Teofilo, who was kidnapped as an infant and raised by the Kikapu Indians of Northern Mexico. At the heart of the book is…
Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette
- 1999 LATimes–Biography winner
- 1999 NBA–Nonfiction finalist
- 1999 NBCC–Biography finalist
- Score: 22.49
A scandalously talented stage performer, a practiced seductress of both men and women, and the flamboyant author of some of the greatest works of twentieth-century literature, Colette was our first true superstar. Now, in Judith Thurman’s Secrets of the Flesh, Colette at last has a biography worthy of her dazzling reputation.
Having spent her childhood in the shadow of an overpowering mother, Colette escaped at age twenty into a turbulent marriage with the sexy, unscrupulous Willy—a literary charlatan who took credit for her bestselling Claudine novels. Weary…
