Presenter of the National Book Awards

National Book Awards - 1969

ARTS AND LETTERS

Winner:

Norman Mailer, The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History

Finalists:

Hannah Arendt - Men in Dark Times
Peter Gay - Weimar Culture
Gordon S. Haight - George Eliot
Gertrude Himmelfarb - Victorian Minds

CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

Winner:

Meindert DeJong, Journey from Peppermint Street

Finalists:

Lloyd Alexander - The High King
Patricia Clapp - Constance
Esther Hautzig - The Endless Steppe
Milton Meltzer - Langston Hughes

FICTION

Winner:

Jerzy Kosinski, Steps
> Appreciations on Best of National Book Awards Fiction Blog

Finalists:

John Barth - Lost in the Funhouse
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >

Frederick Exley - A Fan's Notes
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >

Joyce Carol Oates - Expensive People
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >

Thomas Rogers - The Pursuit of Happiness
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >

HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY

Winner:

Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812

Finalists:

Noel Pharr Davis - Lawrence and Oppenheimer
Alvin M. Josephy, Jr. -The Indian Heritage of America
Norman Mailer - Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republic and Democratic Conventions of 1968
David M. Potter - The South and the Sectional Conflict

POETRY

Winner:

John Berryman, His Toy, His Dream, His Rest
> Read his acceptance speech
> NBA Poetry Blog Essay and Archival Material for Berryman

Finalists:

Gwendolyn Brooks - In the Mecca
Galway Kinnell - Body Rags
John Thompson - The Talking Girl
Keith Waldrop - A Windmill Near Calvary

THE SCIENCES

Winner:

Robert J. Lifton, Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima

Finalists:

Rene Dubos - So Human an Animal
Frank E. Manuel - A Portrait of Isaac Newton
Karl Menninger, M.D. - The Crime of Punishment
James D. Watson - The Double Helix

TRANSLATION

Winner:

William Weaver, Calvino's Cosmicomics

Finalists:

Joseph Hitrec – Andric’s The Pasha's Concubine and Other Tales
Rolfe Humphries – Lucretius’s The Way Things Are
Ellen Conroy Kennedy – Camus’s Lyrical and Critical Essays
Burton Watson – The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu