The National Book Critics Circle is a not-for-profit organization of book editors and critics with some 600 members nationwide. The organization was founded in 1974 to encourage and raise the quality of book criticism in all media and to create a way for critics to communicate with one another about their professional concerns. The NBCC has a Website at www.bookcritics.org.

2007 Winners

Fiction

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

General Nonfiction

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet Washington

Autobiography

Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat

Biography

Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer by Tim Jeal

Poetry

Elegy by Mary Jo Bang

Criticism

The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross

2006 Winners

Fiction

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

Nonfiction

Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution by Simon Schama

Biography

James Tiptree, Jr:. The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips

Autobiography

The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn

Poetry

Tom Thomson in Purgatory by Troy Jollimore

Criticism

Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences by Lawrence Weschler

2005 Winners

Fiction

The March by E.L. Doctorow

Nonfiction

Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich

Biography

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin

Autobiography

Them: A Memoir of Parents by Francine du Plessix Gray

Poetry

Refusing Heaven: Poems by Jack Gilbert

2004 Winners

Fiction

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Nonfiction

The Reformation: A History by Diarmaid MacCulloch

Biography/Autobiography

De Kooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan

Poetry

The School Among the Ruins by Adrienne Rich

Criticism

Where You’re At: Notes From the Frontline of a Hip-Hop Planet by Patrick Neate

2003 Winners

Fiction

The Known World by Edward P. Jones

Nonfiction

Sons of Mississippi by Paul Hendrickson

Biography/Autobiography

Khrushchev: The Man and His Era by William Taubman

Poetry

Columbarium by Susan Stewart

Criticism

River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West by Rebecca Solnit