National Book Awards - 1973
ARTS AND LETTERS
Winner:
Arthur M. Wilson, Diderot
Finalists:
Leo Braudy - Jean Renoir: The World of His Films
Arlene Croce - The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book
Stanley E. Fish - Self-Consuming Artifacts: The Experience of Seventeenth-Century Literature
Michael Goldman - Shakespeare and the Energies of Drama
Daniel Hoffman - Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe
Albert Murray - South to a Very Old Place
Linda Nochlin - Realism
Harold Rosenberg - The De-Definition of Art: Action Art to Pop to Earthworks
Leo Steinberg - Other Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth-Century Art
Lionel Trilling - Sincerity and Authenticity
Alec Wilder - American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900-1950
Vernon Young - On Film: Unpopular Essays on a Popular Art
BIOGRAPHY
Winner:
James Thomas Flexner, George Washington, Vol. IV: Anguish and Farewell, 1793-1799
Finalists:
Ingrid Bengis - Combat in the Erogenous Zone
Hortense Calisher - Herself
Kenneth S. Davis - FDR: The Beckoning of Destiny, 1882-1928
Leon Edel - Henry James, Vol. V: The Master, 1901-1916
Eleanor Flexner - Mary Wollstonecraft
Nikki Giovanni - Gemini
John Houseman - Run-Through
Diane Johnson - Lesser Lives
George F. Kennan - Memoirs, 1950-1963
Joseph P. Lash - Eleanor: The Years Alone
Margaret Mead - Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years
Peter Stansky & William Abrahams- The Unknown Orwell
CHILDREN'S BOOKS
Winner:
Ursula K. LeGuin, The Farthest Shore
Finalists:
Betsy Byars - The House of Wings
Ingri & Edgar Parin d'Aulaire - Trolls
Jean Craighead George - Julie of the Wolves
Betty Jean Lifton & Thomas C. Fox- Children of Vietnam
Georgess McHargue - The Impossible People
Zilpha Keatley Snyder - The Witches of Worm
William Steig - Dominic
CONTEMPORATY AFFAIRS
Winner:
Frances FitzGerald, Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam
Finalists:
Michael Barone, Grant Ujifusa & Douglas Mathews - The Almanac of American Politics
Herbert Block - Herblock's State of the Union
Lynn Eden - Crisis in Watertown
David Halberstam - The Best and the Brightest
Seymour Hersh - Cover-Up
Stanley Karnow - Mao and China
Richard Sennett & Jonathan Cobb - The Hidden Injuries of Class
Colin M. Turnbull - The Mountain People
Garry Wills - Bare Ruined Choirs
(no specific author) - Attica: The Official Report of the New York State Special Commission on Attica
FICTION
Winners:
John Barth, Chimera
> Read His Acceptance Speech
> Appreciations on Best of National Book Awards Fiction BlogJohn Williams, Augustus
> Appreciations on Best of National Book Awards Fiction Blog
Finalists:
Brock Brower - The Late Great Creature
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >Alan Friedman - HermaPhrodeity
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >Barry Hannah - Geronimo Rex
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >George V. Higgins - The Friends of Eddie Coyle
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >R.M. Koster - The Prince
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >Vladimir Nabokov - Transparent Things
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >Ishmael Reed - Mumbo Jumbo
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >Thomas Rogers - The Confessions of a Child of the Century
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >Isaac Bashevis Singer - Enemies, A Love Story
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >Eudora Welty - The Optimist's Daughter
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >
HISTORY
Winners:
Robert Manson Myers, The Children of Pride
Isaiah Trunk, Judenrat
Finalists:
James D. Barber - Presidential Character
John P. Diggins - Mussolini and Fascism
Richard Dunn - Sugar and Slaves
Loren B. Graham - Science and Philosophy in the Soviet Union
David Lovejoy - Glorious Revolution in America
Jerre Mangione - The Dream and the Deal
Robert O. Paxton - Vichy France
Edward R. Rice - Mao's Way
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION
Winner:
S. E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People
Finalists:
Silvano Arieti - The Will to be Human
Germaine Bree - Camus and Sartre
Arthur C. Danto - Mysticism and Morality
Stanley Cavell - The Senses of Walden
William A. Christian, Jr. - Person and God in a Spanish Valley
William Leiss - The Domination of Nature
Theodore Roszak - Where the Wasteland Ends
Morton White - Science and Sentiment in America
Theodore Ziolkowski - Fictional Transfigurations of Jesus
POETRY
Winner:
A. R. Ammons, Collected Poems, 1951-1971
> Read His Acceptance Speech
> NBA Poetry Blog Essay and Archival Material for Ammons
Finalists:
W.H. Auden - Epistle to a Godson and Other Poems
John Berryman - Delusions, Etc.
Richard Eberhart - Fields of Grace
Samuel Hazo - Once for the Last Bandit
John Hollander - Town and Country Matters
Denise Levertov - FootPrints
Archibald MacLeish - The Human Season
James Merrill - Braving the Elements
Frederick Morgan - A Book of Change
Ishmael Reed - Conjure
Louis Simpson - Adventures of the Letter I
THE SCIENCES
Winner:
George B. Schaller, The Serengeti Lion: A Study of Predator-Prey Relations
Finalists:
John E. Bardach - Aquaculture
Herman H. Goldstine - The Computer from Pascal to Von Neumann
Garrett Hardin - Exploring New Ethics for Survival
Morris Kline - Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times
Peter Matthiessen - The Tree Where Man Was Born/The African Experience
H. Lewis McKinney - Wallace and Natural Selection
Victor Richards, M.D - Cancer
Ann H. Zwinger & Beatrice E. Willard- Land Above the Trees
TRANSLATION
Winner:
Allen Mandelbaum, The Aeneid of Virgil
Finalists:
Lily Feiler – Shklovsky’s Mayakovsky and His Circle
Michael Gallagher – Yukio Mishima’s Spring Snow
Richard Howard – Camus’s A Happy Death
Edmund Keeley & Phillip Sherrard – Cavafy’s Selected Poems
Isaac Kelin – The Book of Women
Eleanor L. M. Schmidt – Von Haxthausen’s Studies on the Interior of Russia
May Swenson – Transtromer’s Windows and Stones
Victor Terras – Dostoevsky’s The Gambler