The National Book Foundation announced the 2009 National Book Award winners on November 18, 2009. Check out this year’s winners or take a look at the winners from previous years to find some great reading material.

Fiction

Let the Great World Spin
By Colum McCann
McCann offers a dazzling and hauntingly rich vision of the loveliness, pain, and mystery of life in New York City in the 1970s.

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Nonfiction

The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
By T. J. Stiles
From the award-winning author of Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War comes an authoritative look at the life of Cornelius Vanderbilt – the complex and combative man whose genius and force of will gave birth to modern capitalism.

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Poetry

Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy
By Keith Waldrop
This selection of recent work by internationally celebrated poet Keith Waldrop presents three related poem sequences – "Shipwreck in Haven," "Falling in Love through a Description," and "The Plummet of Vitruvius" – in a poetic triptych. In these quasi-abstract, experimental lines, collaged words torn from their contexts take on new meanings.

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Young People’s Literature

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice
By Phillip Hoose
Based on extensive interviews with Claudette Colvin and many others, Phillip Hoose presents an in-depth account of an important yet largely unknown civil rights figure, skillfully weaving her dramatic story into the fabric of the historic Montgomery bus boycott and court case that would change the course of American history.

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Book descriptions provided by BookLetters.