The National Book Critics Circle Award

Fiction Winner

• Philip Roth, The Counterlife (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Fiction Finalists

• Jane Smiley, The Age of Grief (Knopf)
• Toni Morrison, Beloved (Knopf)
• Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
• Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety (Random House)

General Nonfiction Winner

• Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Simon & Schuster)

General Nonfiction Finalists

• Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic (St. Martin’s)
• James Miller, Democracy Is in the Streets, (Simon & Schuster)
• Charles Mee, The Genius of the People (Harper & Row)
• Stephen Jay Gould, Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle (Harvard University)

Biography/Autobiography Winner

• Donald Howard, Chaucer: His Life, His Work, His World (Dutton)

Biography/Autobiography Finalists

• Annie Dillard, An American Childhood (Harper & Row)
• Prudence Crowther, ed., Don’t Tread on Me: The Selected Letters of S.J. Perelman (Viking)
• Paul Taylor, Private Domain (Knopf)
• Arthur Miller, Timebends: A Life (Grove Press)

Poetry Winner

• C.K. Williams, Flesh and Blood (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Poetry Finalists

• John Ashbery, April Galleons (Viking)
• Alan Shapiro, Happy Hour (University of Chicago)
• May Swenson, In Other Words (Knopf)
• Donald Justice, The Sunset Maker (Atheneum)

Criticism Winner

• Edwin Denby, Dance Writings (Knopf)

Criticism Finalists

• Robert Lowell, Collected Prose (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
• Guy Davenport, Every Force Evolves a Form (North Point Press)
• Arlene Croce, Sight Lines (Knopf)
• Joseph Horowitz, Understanding Toscanini (Knopf)

Ivan Sandrof/NBCC Board Award Winner

• Robert Giroux

Reviewer’s Citation Winner

• Josh Rubins

Reviewer’s Citation Finalists

• Mindy Aloff
• William Logan
• Jack Miles
• Jonathan Penner
• George Scialabba