National Book Awards - 1983
AUTOBIOGRAPHY/BIOGRAPHY (HARDCOVER)
Winner:
Judith Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller
Finalists:
Russell Baker – Growing Up
Robert A. Caro – The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
Robert J. Donovan – Tumultuous Years: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1949-1953
Lewis Mumford – Sketches from Life: The Early Years
AUTOBIOGRAPHY/BIOGRAPHY (PAPERBACK)
Winner:
James R. Mellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times
Finalists:
Dumas Malone – Jefferson in His Time, Vol. VI: The Sage of Monticello
Paul Mariani – William Carlos Williams: A New World Naked
William S. McFeely – Grant
Jean Strouse – Alice James: A Biography
CHILDREN'S FICTION (HARDCOVER)
Winner:
Jean Fritz , Homesick: My Own Story
Finalists:
Lloyd Alexander – The Kestrel
Edward Fenton – The Refugee Summer
Virginia Hamilton – Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush
Zibby Oneal – A Formal Feeling
CHILDREN'S FICTION (PAPERBACK)
Winner:
Paula Fox, A Place Apart
Joyce Carol Thomas, Marked by Fire
Finalists:
Judy Blume – Tiger Eyes
Sue Ellen Bridgers – Notes for another Life
Lois Lowry – Anastasia Again!
CHILDREN'S BOOKS, NON-FICTION
Winner:
James Cross Giblin, Chimney Sweeps
Finalists:
Linda Grant De Pauw – Seafaring Women
Patricia Lauber – Journey to the Planets
John Nance – Lobo of the Tasaday
Judith St. George – The Brooklyn Bridge
CHILDREN'S PICTURE BOOKS (HARDCOVER)
Winner:
Barbara Cooney , Miss Rumphius
William Steig, Doctor De Soto
Finalists:
Marcia Brown – Shadow
Karla Kuskin; Marc Simont, ill. – The Philharmonic Gets Dressed
Cynthia Rylant; Diane Goode, ill. – When I Was Young in the Mountains
CHILDREN'S PICTURE BOOKS (PAPERBACK)
Winner:
Mary Ann Hoberman; Betty Fraser, ill, A House is a House for Me
Finalists:
Steven Kellogg – Pinkerton, Behave!
Peter Koeppen – Robert Frost's A Swinger of Birches
Edward Marshall – Space Case
Ellen Shire – The Bungling Ballerinas
FICTION (HARDCOVER)
Winner:
Alice Walker, The Color Purple
> Appreciations on Best of National Book Awards Fiction Blog
Finalists:
Gail Godwin – A Mother and Two Daughters
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >Bobbie Ann Mason – Shiloh and Other Stories
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >Paul Theroux – The Mosquito Coast
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >Anne Tyler – Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >
FICTION (PAPERBACK)
Winner:
Eudora Welty, Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
> Appreciations on Best of National Book Awards Fiction Blog
Finalists:
David Bradley – The Chaneysville Incident
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >Mary Gordon – The Company of Women
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >Marilynne Robinson – Housekeeping
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >Robert Stone – A Flag for Sunrise
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >
FIRST NOVEL
Winner:
Gloria Naylor , The Women of Brewster Place
> Read Her Acceptance Speech
> Appreciations on Best of National Book Awards Fiction Blog
Finalists:
Gail Albert - Matters of Chance
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >John M. Del Vecchio - The 13th Valley
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >Susanna Moore - My Old Sweetheart
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >David Small - Almost Famous
- “Contenders” Fiction Finalists Exhibition Page >
GENERAL NONFICTION (HARDCOVER)
Winner:
Fox Butterfield, China: Alive in the Bitter Sea
Finalists:
George F. Kennan – The Nuclear Delusion: Soviet-American Relations in the Atomic Age
David McClintock – Indecent Exposure: A True Story of Hollywood and Wall Street
Jonathan Schell – The Fate of the Earth
Susan Sheehan – Is There No Place on Earth for Me?
GENERAL NONFICTION (PAPERBACK)
Winner:
James Fallows, National Defense
Finalists:
Edwin R. Bayley – Joe McCarthy and the Press
Paul Fussell – Abroad: British Literary Traveling Between the Wars
Al Santoli – Everything We Had: An Oral History of the Vietnam War
Joanna L. Stratton – Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier
HISTORY (HARDCOVER)
Winner:
Alan Brinkley , Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin and the Great Depression
Finalists:
Gordon A. Craig – The Germans
Robert Darnton – The Literary Underground of the Old Regime
John Putnam Demos – Entertaining Satan
William H. McNeill – The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force and Society Since A.D. 1000
Bertram Wyatt-Brown – Southern Honor
HISTORY (PAPERBACK)
Winner:
Frank E. Manuel & Fritzie P. Manuel, Utopian Thought in the Western World
Finalists:
George M. Fredrickson – White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History
Ray Huang – 1587, a Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline
John Noble Wilford – The Mapmakers
ORIGINAL PAPERBACK
Winner:
Lisa Goldstein, The Red Magician
Finalists:
David P. Barash, PhD., and Judith Eve Lipton, M.D. – Stop Nuclear War: A Handbook
Mark Green – Winning Back America
Ground Zero War Foundation – Nuclear War
Marc Scott Zicree – The Twilight Zone Companion
POETRY
Winners:
Galway Kinnell, Selected Poems
> NBA Poetry Blog Essay and Archival Material for KinnellCharles Wright, Country Music: Selected Early Poems
> NBA Poetry Blog Essay and Archival Material for Wright
Finalists:
Jack Gilbert – Monolithos
Linda Pastan – PM/AM
Mona Van Duyn – Letters from a Father and Other Poems
SCIENCE (HARDCOVER)
Winner:
Abraham Pais, "Subtle is the Lord...": The Science and Life of Albert Einstein
Finalists:
Philip J. Hilts – Scientific Temperaments: Three Lives in Contemporary Science
Melvin Konner – The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit
Ernst Mayr – The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance
Heinz R. Pagels – Cosmic Code: Physics as the Language of Nature
SCIENCE (PAPERBACK)
Winner:
Philip J. Davis & Reuben Hersh, The Mathematical Experience
Finalists:
Morris Kline – Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty
Cynthia Moss – Portrait in the Wild: Animal Behavior in the Western World
Berton Rouechè – The Medical Detectives
G. Ledyard Stebbins – Darwin to DNA: Molecules to Humanity
TRANSLATION
Winner:
Richard Howard, Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal
Finalists:
Marion Faber – Wolfgang Hildesheimer’s Mozart
Allen Mandelbaum – Dante’s Purgatorio
Philip B. Miller – An Abyss Deep Enough: Letters of Heinrich von Kleist
Richard Wilbur – Racine’s Andromache