Annal:2005 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography
From AwardAnnals
Results of the National Book Critics Circle Award in the year 2005. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography
- Nonfiction books
- Nonfiction authors
- Biography books
- Biography authors.
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
- 2006 Pulitzer–Biography winner
- 2005 NBCC–Biography winner
- Score: 20.56
American Prometheus is the first full-scale biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, “father of the atomic bomb,” the brilliant, charismatic physicist who led the effort to capture the awesome fire of the sun for his country in time of war. Immediately after Hiroshima, he became the most famous scientist of his generation–one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, the embodiment of modern man confronting the consequences of scientific progress.
He was the author of a radical proposal to place international controls over atomic materials–an idea…
Lee Miller: A Life
- 2005 NBCC–Biography finalist
- Score: 6.55
A trenchant yet sympathetic portrait of Lee Miller, one of the iconic faces and careers of the twentieth century.
Carolyn Burke reveals Miller as a multifaceted woman: both model and photographer, muse and reporter, sexual adventurer and mother, and, in later years, gourmet cook—the last of the many dramatic transformations she underwent during her lifetime. A sleek blond bombshell, Miller was part of a glamorous circle in New York and Paris in the 1920s and 1930s as a leading Vogue model, close to Edward Steichen, Charlie Chaplin, Jean Cocteau, and…
Like A Fiery Elephant: The Story Of B. S. Johnson
- 2005 NBCC–Biography finalist
- 2004 JT Black-Biography shortlist
- Score: 12.55
The most critically acclaimed literary biography published in the UK in 2004, Like a Fiery Elephant tells the story of B.S. Johnson, one of Britain’s most innovative, passionate, and controversial writers of the 1960s and 70s. Johnson was an unflinching advocate for the avant-garde in both literature and film, and held strong (some would say extreme) views on the future of the novel. Working firmly in the tradition of Joyce and Beckett—the latter of whom became a friend and mentor of sorts to Johnson—he tormented his agents, editors, and publishers with…
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
- 2005 LATimes–Biography finalist
- 2005 NBCC–Biography finalist
- Score: 12.55
Acclaimed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin illuminates Lincoln’s political genius in this highly original work, as the one-term congressman and prairie lawyer rises from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals of national reputation to become president.
On May 18, 1860, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, and Abraham Lincoln waited in their hometowns for the results from the Republican National Convention in Chicago. When Lincoln emerged as the victor, his rivals were dismayed and angry.
Throughout the turbulent 1850s, each had…
Mark Twain: A Life
- 2005 NBCC–Biography finalist
- Score: 6.55
Mark Twain founded the American voice. His works are a living national treasury: taught, quoted, and reprinted more than those of any writer except Shakespeare. His awestruck contemporaries saw him as the representative figure of his times, and his influence has deeply flavored the 20th and 21st centuries. Yet somehow, beneath the vast flowing river of literature that he left behind—books, sketches, speeches, not to mention the thousands of letters to his friends and his remarkable entries in private journals—the man who became Mark Twain, Samuel Langhorne…
