National Book Award

From AwardAnnals

A consortium of book publishing groups sponsored the first annual National Book Awards Ceremony. Their goal was to enhance public awareness of exceptional books written by Americans, and to increase the popularity of reading in general. The Ceremony was held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. The year was 1950.

Since then, The National Book Awards have become the nation's preeminent literary prizes. Today, the Awards are bestowed every Autumn by the National Book Foundation in four genres. The winners are selected by five-member, independent judging panels for each genre, and receive a $10,000 cash award and a bronze sculpture.

Eligible books must be authored by a U.S. citizen and published in the U.S. in English.

Notes

• The madness of the early 1980s sometimes caused a book to be a finalist in two different years—in a hardcover category and later in paperback. To protect the integrity of the ranking in the old site, those books are listed only in the year for which they are a hardcover finalist, unless they actually won as a paperback. One of these days, these books should be added to the paperback annal with a score of “nominee*” and a note.

Award categories

Current subcategories

Fiction :	2007	Annals	Ranked books	Ranked authors
Nonfiction:	2007	Annals	Ranked books	Ranked authors
Poetry:	2007	Annals	Ranked books	Ranked authors
Young People’s Literature:	2007	Annals	Ranked books	Ranked authors

Obsolete subcategories

The National Book Awards have experimented with different categories over the years. It began with three categories in 1950, began adding categories in 1964, reached a peak of twenty-seven categories in 1980, and cut back rather suddenly to three categories in 1984. Needless to say, so many categories makes navigation of this site rather complicated.

Fiction subcategories	effective years
First Fiction:	1980–1985	Annals	Ranked books	Ranked authors
Mystery:	only 1980	Annals	Ranked books	Ranked authors
Original Paperback:	only 1983	Annals	Ranked books	Ranked authors
Science Fiction:	only 1980	Annals	Ranked books	Ranked authors
Western:	only 1980	Annals	Ranked books	Ranked authors
Nonfiction subcategories
Arts and Letters:	1964[1]–1976	Annals	Ranked books	Ranked authors
Biography/Autobiography:	1972–1983 except 1976	Annals	Ranked books	Ranked authors
Current Interest [2]	1972–1980	Annals	Ranked books	Ranked authors
History:	1972–1983	Annals	Ranked books	Ranked authors
History and Biography:	1964[1]–1971, 1976	Annals	Ranked books	Ranked authors
Philosophy and Religion:	1970, 1972–1975	Annals	Ranked books	Ranked authors
Reference:	only 1980	Annals	Ranked books	Ranked authors
Religion/Inspirational:	only 1980	Annals	Ranked books	Ranked authors
Science:	1969[1]–1975, 1980–1983	Annals	Ranked books	Ranked authors
Science/Philosophy/Religion:	1964–1968[1]
Young People’s subcategories
Children's Nonfiction:	1981–1983	Annals	Ranked books	Ranked authors
Children's Picture Book:	1982–1983	Annals	Ranked books	Ranked authors
Other
Translation:	1967–1983 except 1976	Annals	Ranked books	Ranked authors

Event Calendar

?   Event Calendar
October
11	NBA finalists
November
9	NBA winners

References

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3} The NBA annals currently go back to 1970, so annals prior to 1970 do not exist.
2. ↑ Current Interest subcategory was actually named Contemporary Affairs (1972–1976), Contemporary Thought (1977–1979), and finally Current Interest (1980)