The National Book Critics Circle Award

Fiction Winner

• Jim Crace, Being Dead (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Fiction Finalists

• Amy Bloom, A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You (Random House)
• Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Random House)
• David Means, Assorted Fire Events: Stories (Context Books)
• Zadie Smith, White Teeth (Random House)

General Nonfiction Winner

• Ted Conover, Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing (Random House)

General Nonfiction Finalists

• Fred Anderson, Crucible of War (Knopf)
• Frances Fitzgerald, Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War (Simon & Schuster)
• Laurie Garrett, Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health (Hyperion)
• Alice Kaplan, The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach (Univ. of Chicago)

Biography/Autobiography Winner

• Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (HarperCollins)

Biography/Autobiography Finalists

• Robin Marantz Henig, The Monk in the Garden: The Lost and Found Genius of Gregor Mendel, the Father of Genetics (Houghton Mifflin)
• Victor Kemplerer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942-1945 (Random House)
• David Nasaw, The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst (Houghton Mifflin)
• Jean-Yves Tadie, Marcel Proust: A Life (Viking)

Poetry Winner

• Judy Jordan, Carolina Ghost Woods (LSU)

Poetry Finalists

• Michael Collier, The Ledge (Houghton Mifflin)
• Anne Carson, Men in the Off Hours (Knopf)
• Yusef Komunyakaa, Talking Dirty to the Gods (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
• Davis McCombs, Ultima Thule (Yale)

Criticism Winner

• Cynthia Ozick, Quarrel & Quandary (Knopf)

Criticism Finalists

• Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to Present (HarperCollins)
• Claudia Roth Pierpont, Passionate Minds (Knopf)
• Charles Rosen, Critical Entertainments: Music Old and New (Harvard Univ. Press)
• Sherod Santos, A Poetry of Two Minds (University of Georgia Press)

Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Winner

• Daniel Mendelsohn

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award Winner

• Barney Rosset