Each year, the National Book Critics Circle presents awards for the finest books published in English in six categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Biography, Autobiography, Poetry, and Criticism.
The National Book Critics Circle Award
1990 Winners & Finalists
Fiction Winner
- John Updike, Rabbit at Rest (Knopf)
Fiction Finalists
- Charles Johnson, Middle Passage (Atheneum)
- Sue Miller, Family Pictures (HarperCollins)
- Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried (Seymour Lawrence/Houghton Mifflin)
- Wallace Stegner, Collected Stories (Random House)
General Nonfiction Winner
- Shelby Steele, The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America (St. Martin’s)
General Nonfiction Finalists
- Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (Verso)
- Alma Guillermoprieto, Samba (Knopf)
- O.B. Hardison, Disappearing Through the Skylight: Culture and Technology in the 20th Century (Viking)
- Kevin Phillips, The Politics of Rich and Poor: Wealth and the American Electorate in the Regan Aftermath (Random House)
Biography/Autobiography Winner
- Robert Caro, Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Knopf)
Biography/Autobiography Finalists
- John Espey, Strong Drink, Strong Language (John Daniel)
- Patricia O’Toole, The Five of Hearts: An Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends, 1880-1918 (Clarkson N. Potter)
- Richard Rhodes, A Hole in the World (Simon & Schuster)
- T.H. Watkins, Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of Harold L. Ickes (Holt)
Poetry Winner
- Amy Gerstler, Bitter Angel (Nort Point)
Poetry Finalists
- Frank Bidart, In the Western Night (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
- John Haines, New Poems, 1980-88 (Story Line Press)
- Anthony Hecht, The Transparent Man (Knopf)
- Charles Simic, The Book of Gods and Devils (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich)
Criticism Winner
- Arthur Danto, Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Historical Present (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Criticism Finalists
- Stanley Crouch, Notes of a Hanging Judge: Essays and Reviews, 1979-1989 (Oxford University Press)
- Irving Howe, Selected Writings, 1950-1990 (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich)
- Camille Paglia, Emily Dickinson (Yale University Press)
- Wilfrid Sheed, Essays in Disguise (Knopf)
Ivan Sandorf/NBCC Board Award Winner
- Donald Keene