Presenter of the National Book Awards

National Book Awards - 1964

FICTION

Winner:

John Updike, The Centaur
> Read His Acceptance Speech
> Appreciations on Best of National Book Awards Fiction Blog

Finalists:

Bernard Malamud - Idiots First
Mary McCarthy - The Group
Thomas Pynchon - V
Harvey Swados - The Will

ARTS AND LETTERS (NONFICTION)

Winner:

Aileen Ward, John Keats: The Making of a Poet
> Read Her Acceptance Speech

HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY (NONFICTION)

Winner:

William H. McNeill, The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community

SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION (NONFICTION)

Winner:

Christopher Tunnard & Boris Pushkarev, Man-made America

Finalists:

James Baldwin - The Fire Next Time
Walter Jackson Bate - John Keats
R.F. Dasmann - The Last Horizon
Howard Ensign Evans - Wasp Farm
Shelby Foote - The Civil War, Vol. II
Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan - Beyond the Melting Pot
Richard Hofstadter - Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
David E. Lilienthal - Change, Hope and the Bomb
Seymour M. Lipset - The First New Nation
Peter Lyons - Success Story: The Life and Times of S.S. McClure
Ralph McGill - The South and the Southerner
Francis Steegmuller - Apollinaire
Stewart Udall - The Quiet Crisis
Bertram D. Wolfe - The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera

POETRY

Winner:

John Crowe Ransom, Selected Poems
> NBA Poetry Blog Essay and Archival Material for Ransom

Finalists:

W.S. Merwin - The Moving Target
Louis Simpson - At the End of the Open Road
May Swenson - To Mix with Time