National Book Awards - 1979
BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Winner:
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. , Robert Kennedy and His Times
Finalists:
Donald Hall - Remembering Poets
William Manchester - American Caesar: Douglas Macarthur
William M. Murphy - Prodigal Father: The Life of John Butler Yeats
Phyllis Rose - Woman of Letters: A Life of Virginia Woolf
CHILDREN'S LITERATURE
Winner:
Katherine Paterson, The Great Gilly Hopkins
Finalists:
Lloyd Alexander - The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha
Vera Cleaver - Queen of Hearts
Sid Fleischman - Humbug Mountain
Paula Fox - The Little Swinehead and Other Tales
CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT
Winner:
Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard
Finalists:
Kenneth E. Boulding - Stable Peace
Ivan Doig - This House of Sky: Landscapes of the Western Wind
Alfred Kazin - New York Jew
Meyer Schapiro - Modern Art
FICTION
Winners:
Tim O'Brien, Going After Cacciato
> Appreciations on Best of National Book Awards Fiction Blog
Finalists:
John Cheever - The Stories of John Cheever
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >John Irving - The World According to Garp
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >Diane Johnson - Lying Low
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >David Plante - The Family
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >
HISTORY
Winner:
Richard Beale Davis, Intellectual Life in the Colonial South, 1585-1763
Finalists:
Reinhard Bendix - Kings or People
Gordon A. Craig - Germany, 1866-1945
John H. White, Jr. - The American Railroad Passenger Car
Garry Wills - Inventing America
POETRY
Winner:
James Merrill, Mirabell: Books of Number
> NBA Poetry Blog Essay and Archival Material for Merrill
Finalists:
Robert Hayden - American Journal
Sandra McPherson - The Year of Our Birth
Philip Schultz - Like Wings
May Swenson - New & Selected Things Taking Place
TRANSLATION
Winner:
Clayton Eshleman & Jose Rubin Barcia, Cesar Vallejo's The Complete Posthumous Poetry
Finalists:
Jonathan Chaves - Yuan Hung-Tao’s Pilgrim of the Clouds
June Guicharnaud - Pierre-Jakes Helias’s The Horse of Pride
Richard Howard - Barthes’s A Lover's Discourse
Reynolds Price - A Palpable God: Thirty Stories Translated from The Bible