The National Book Awards were established in 1950 by a consortium of publishing groups who wanted to bring to the public's attention exceptional books written by Americans, as well as encourage reading in general. Today, the awards are given to recognize achievements in four genres: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young people's literature. The winners, chosen by five-member, independent judging panels for each genre, receive a $10,000 cash award and a crystal sculpture.

Nonfiction: Carlos Eire, Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy

(Free Press/S&S) -- a March/April 2003 Book Sense 76 Pick

Poetry: C.K. Williams, The Singing (FSG)

Young People's Literature: Polly Horvath, The Canning Season (FSG)

Nonfiction: Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Alfred A. Knopf)

Poetry: Ruth Stone, In the Next Galaxy (Copper Canyon Press)

Young People's Literature: Nancy Farmer, The House of the Scorpion

(A Richard Jackson Book/Atheneum Books for Young Readers)

-- a Winter 2002-2003 Children's Book Sense 76 Top Ten Pick

Nonfiction: Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Poetry: Alan Dugan, Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry

Young People's Literature: Virginia Euwer Wolff, True Believer

Nonfiction: In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, Nathaniel Philbrick

Poetry: Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000, Lucille Clifton

Young People's Literature: Homeless Bird,Gloria Whelan

Nonfiction: Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, John W. Dower

Poetry: Vice: New and Selected Poems, Ai

Young People's Literature: When Zachary Beaver Came to Town, Kimberly Willis Holt

Nonfiction: Slaves in the Family, Edward Ball

Poetry: This Time: New and Selected Poems, Gerald Stern

Young People's Literature: Holes, Louis Sachar

Nonfiction: American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, Joseph J. Ellis

Poetry: Effort at Speech: New & Selected Poems, William Meredith

Young People's Literature: Dancing on the Edge, Han Nolan

Nonfiction: An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us, James Carroll

Poetry: Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey, Hayden Carruth

Young People's Literature: Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida, Victor Martinez

Nonfiction: The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism, Tina Rosenberg

Poetry: Passing Through: The Later Poems, Stanley Kunitz

Nonfiction: How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter, Sherwin B. Nuland

Poetry: A Worshipful Company of Fletchers, James Tate

Nonfiction: United States: Essays 1952-1992, Gore Vidal

Poetry: Garbage, A. R. Ammons

Nonfiction: Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story, Paul Monette

Poetry: New & Selected Poems, Mary Oliver

Nonfiction: Freedom, Orlando Patterson

Poetry: What Work Is, Philip Levine

Nonfiction: The House of Morgan:

An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance, Ron Chernow

Nonfiction: From Beirut to Jerusalem, Thomas L. Friedman

Nonfiction: A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam, Neil Sheehan

Nonfiction: The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes

Nonfiction: Arctic Dreams, Barry Lopez

First Work of Fiction: Easy in the Islands, Bob Shacochis

Nonfiction: Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families,

J. Anthony Lukas

First Work of Fiction: Stones for Ibarra, Harriet Doerr

Nonfiction: Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, 1833-1845, Robert V. Remini

Autobiography/Biography (paperback): Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Time, James R. Mellow

Children's Book, Fiction (hardcover): Homesick: My Own Story, Jean Fritz

Children's Book, Fiction (paperback): A Place Apart, Paula Fox; Marked By Fire, Joyce Carol Thomas

Children's Book, Nonfiction: Chimney Sweeps, James Cross Giblin

Children's Picture Book (hardcover): Miss Rumphius, Barbara Cooney; Doctor De Soto, William Steig

Children's Picture Book (paperback): A House Is a House for Me, Mary Ann Hoberman

Fiction (hardcover): The Color Purple, Alice Walker

Fiction (paperback): The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, Eudora Welty

First Novel: The Women of Brewster Place, Gloria Naylor

General Nonfiction (hardcover): China: Alive in the Bitter Sea, Fox Butterfield

General Nonfiction (paperback): National Defense, James Fallows

History (hardcover): Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin and The Great Depression, Alan Brinkley

History (paperback): Utopian Thought in the Western World, Frank E. Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel

Original Paperback: The Red Magician, Lisa Goldstein

Poetry: Selected Poems, Galway Kinnell; Country Music: Selected Early Poems, Charles Wright

Science (hardcover): "Subtle Is the Lord...": The Science and Life of Albert Einstein, Abraham Pais

Science (paperback): The Mathematical Experience, Philip P. Davis and Reuben Hersh

Translation: Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal, Richard Howard

Autobiography/biography (paperback): Walter Lippmann and the American Century, Ronald Steel

Children's Book, Fiction (hardcover): Westmark, Lloyd Alexander

Children's Book, Fiction (paperback): Words by Heart, Ouida Sebestyen

Children's Book, Nonfiction: A Penguin Year, Susan Bonners

Children's Book, Picture Book (hardcover): Outside Over There, Maurice Sendak

Children's Book, Picture Book (paperback): Noah's Ark, Peter Spier

Fiction (hardcover): Rabbit Is Rich, John Updike

Fiction (paperback): So Long, See You Tomorrow, William Maxwell

First Novel: Dale Loves Sophie to Death, Robb Forman Dew

General Nonfiction (hardcover): The Soul of a New Machine, Tracy Kidder

General Nonfiction (paperback): Naming Names, Victor S. Navasky

History (hardcover): People of the Sacred Mountain: A History of the Northern Cheyenne Chiefs and Warrior Societies,

1830-1879, Father Peter John Powell

History (paperback): The Generation of 1914, Robert Wohl

Poetry: Life Supports: New and Collected Poems, William Bronk

Science (hardcover): Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind, Donald C. Johanson and Maitland A. Edey

Science (paperback): Taking the Quantum Leap: The New Physics for Nonscientists, Fred Alan Wolf

Translation: Higuchi Ichiyo's In the Shade of Spring Leaves, Robert Lyons Danly;

The Ten Thousand Leaves: A Translation of the Man'Yoshu, Japan's Premier Anthology of Classical Poetry,

Ian Hideo Levy

Autobiography/biography (paperback): Samuel Beckett, Deidre Bair

Children's Book, Fiction (hardcover): The Night Swimmers, Betsy Byars

Children's Book, Fiction (paperback): Ramona and Her Mother, Beverly Cleary

Children's Book, Nonfiction (hardcover): Oh, Boy! Babies, Alison Cragin Herzig and Jane Lawrence Mali

Fiction (hardcover): Plains Song, Wright Morris

Fiction (paperback): The Stories of John Cheever, John Cheever

First Novel: Sister Wolf, Ann Arensberg

General Nonfiction (hardcover): China Men, Maxine Hong Kingston

General Nonfiction (paperback): The Last Cowboy, Jane Kramer

History (hardcover): Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality, John Boswell

History (paperback): Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery, Leon F. Litwak

Poetry: The Need to Hold Still, Lisel Mueller

Science (hardcover): The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections on Natural History, Stephen Jay Gould

Science (paperback): The Medusa and the Snail, Lewis Thomas

Translation: The Letters of Gustave Flaubert, Francis Steegmuller;

Arno Schmidt's Evening Edged in Gold, John E. Woods

Autobiography (paperback): And I Worked at the Writer's Trade, Malcolm Cowley

Biography (hardcover): The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Edmund Morris

Biography (paperback): Max Perkins: Editor of Genius, A. Scott Berg

Children's Book (hardcover): A Gathering of Days: A New England Girl's Journal, Joan W. Blos

Children's Book (paperback): A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Madeleine L'Engle

Current Interest (hardcover): Julia Child and More Company, Julia Child

Current Interest (paperback): The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher Lasch

Fiction (hardcover): Sophie's Choice, William Styron

Fiction (paperback): The World According to Garp, John Irving

First Novel: Birdy, William Wharton General Nonfiction (hardcover): The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe

General Nonfiction (paperback): The Snow Leopard, Peter Matthiessen

General Reference (hardcover): The Complete Directory, Elder Witt, ed.

General Reference (paperback): Complete Directory to Prime Network TV Shows: 1946-Present

Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh

History (hardcover): White House Years, Henry A. Kissinger

History (paperback): A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, Barbara W. Tuchman

Mystery (hardcover): The Green Ripper, John D. MacDonald

Mystery (paperback): Stained Glass, William F. Buckley, Jr.

Poetry: Ashes, Philip Levine Religion/Inspiration (hardcover): The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels

Religion/Inspiration (paperback): A Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken

Science (hardcover): Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas Hofstadter

Science (paperback): The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics, Gary Zukav

Science Fiction (hardcover): Jem, Frederick Pohl

Science Fiction (paperback): The Book of the Dun Cow, Walter Wangerin, Jr.

Translation: Cesare Pavese's Hard Labor, William Arrowsmith; Osip E.

Mandelstam's Complete Critical Prose and Letters, Jane Gary Harris and Constance Link

Western: Bendigo Shafter, Louis L'Amour

Children's Book: The Great Gilly Hopkins, Katherine Paterson

Contemporary Thought: The Snow Leopard, Peter Matthiessen

Fiction: Going After Cacciato, Tim O'Brian

History: Intellectual Life in the Colonial South, 1585-1760, Richard Beale Davis

Poetry: Mirabell: Books of Number, James Merrill

Translation: Cesar Vallejo's The Complete Posthumous Poetry, Clayton Eshleman and

Jose Rubin Barcia

Children's Literature: The View from the Oak, Herbert Kohl and Judith Kohl

Contemporary Thought: Winners and Losers, Gloria Emerson

Fiction: Blood Ties, Mary Lee Settle

History: The Path Between the Seas: Creation of the Panama Canal 1870-1914, David

McCullough

Poetry: The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov, Howard Nemerov

Translation: Uwe George's In the Deserts of This Earth, Clara Winston and Richard

Winston

Children's Book: The Master Puppeteer, Katherine Paterson

Contemporary Thought: The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of

Fairy Tales, Bruno Bettleheim

Fiction: The Spectator Bird, Wallace Stegner

History: World of Our Fathers, Irving Howe

Poetry: Collected Poems, 1930-1976, Richard Eberhart

Translation: Master Tung's Western Chamber Romance, Li-Li Ch'en

Children's Literature: Bert Breen's Barn, Walter D. Edmonds

Contemporary Affairs: Passage to Ararat, Michael J. Arlen

Fiction: Jr, William Gaddis

History: The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823, David Brion Davis

Poetry: Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, John Ashbery

Watcher, Lewis Thomas

Biography: The Life of Emily Dickinson, Richard B. Sewall

Children's Book: M.C. Higgins The Great, Virginia Hamilton

Contemporary Affairs: All Gods Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw, Theodore Rosengarten

Fiction: Dog Soldiers, Robert Stone; The Hair of Harold Roux, Thomas Williams

History: The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson, Bernard Bailyn

Philosophy and Religion: Anarchy, State and Utopia, Robert Nozick

Poetry: Presentation Piece, Marilyn Hacker

Science: Interpretation of Schizophrenia, Silvano Arieti

Translation: Miguel D. Unamuno's The Agony of Christianity and Essays on Faith,

Anthony Kerrigan

Biography: Malcolm Lowry: A Biography, Douglas Day; Macaulay: The Shaping of the

Historian, John Clive

Children's Book: The Court of the Stone Children, Eleanor Cameron

Contemporary Affairs: The Briar Patch, Murray Kempton

Fiction: A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories, Isaac Bashevis Singer; Gravity's

Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon

History: Macaulay: The Shaping of the Historian, John Clive

Philosophy and Religion: Edmund Husserl: Philosopher of Infinite Tasks, Maurice

Natanson

Poetry: Diving into the Wreck: Poems, 1971-72, Adrienne Rich; The Fall of America:

Poems of These States, Allen Ginsberg

Science: Life: The Unfinished Experiment, S.E. Lurie

Translation: Octavio Paz's: Alternating Current, Helen R. Lane; Paul Valery's Monsieur

Teste, Jackson Matthews

Biography: George Washington, Vol. IV: Anguish and Farewell, 1793-1799, James

Thomas Flexner

Children's Book: The Farthest Shore, Ursula K. LeGuin

Contemporary Affairs: Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam,

Frances Fitzgerald

Fiction: Chimera, John Barth; Augustus, John Williams

History: The Children of Pride: A True Story of Georgia and the Civil War, Robert

Manson Myers; Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi

Occupation, Isaiah Trunk

Philosophy and Religion: A Religious History of the American People, S.E. Ahlstrom

Poetry: Collected Poems: 1951-1971, A.R. Ammons

Science: The Serengeti Lion: A Study of Predator-Prey Relations, George B. Schaller

Translation: Virgil's Aeneid, Allen Mandelbaum

Biography: Eleanor and Franklin: The Story of Their Relationship, Based on Eleanor

Roosevelt's Private Papers, Joseph P. Lash

Children's Book: The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine or the Hithering Thithering Djinn,

Donald Bartheleme

Contemporary Affairs: The Last Whole Earth Catalog, Stewart Brand, ed.

Fiction: The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor, Flannery O'Connor

History: Ordeal of the Union, Vols. VII & VIII: The Organized War, 1863-1864 and The

Organized War to Victory, Allen Nevins

Philosophy and Religion: Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America,

Martin E. Marty

Poetry: The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara, Frank O'Hara; Selected Poems, Howard

Moss

Science: The Blue Whale, George L. Small

Translation: Jacques Monod's Chance and Necessity, Austryn Wainhouse

Children's Book: The Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian, Lloyd Alexander

Fiction: Mr. Sammler's Planet, Saul Bellow

History and Biography: Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom, James MacGregor Burns

Poetry: To See, To Take, Mona Van Duyn

Science: Science in the British Colonies of America, Raymond Phineas Stearns

Translation: Bertolt Brecht's Saint Joan of the Stockyards, Frank Jones; Yasunari

Kawabata's The Sound of The Mountain, Edward G. Seidensticker

Children's Book: A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing Up in Warsaw, Isaac

Bashevis Singer

Fiction: Them, Joyce Carol Oates

History and Biography: Huey Long, T. Harry Williams

Philosophy and Religion: Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence, Erik H.

Erikson

Poetry: The Complete Poems, Elizabeth Bishop

Translation: Celine's Castle to Castle, Ralph Manheim

Norman Mailer

Children's Literature: Journey from Peppermint Street, Meindert DeJong

Fiction: Steps, Jerzy Kosinski

History and Biography: White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro,

1550-1812, Winthrop D. Jordan

Poetry: His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, John Berryman

Science: Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima, Robert J. Lifton

Translation: Calvino's Cosmicomics, William Weaver

Fiction: The Eighth Day, Thornton Wilde

r History and Biography: Memoirs: 1925-1950, George F. Kennan

Poetry: The Light Around the Body, Robert Bly

Science, Philosophy, and Religion: Death at an Early Age, Jonathan Kozol

Translation: Soren Kirkegaard's Journals and Papers, Edna Hong and Howard Hong

Fiction: The Fixer, Bernard Malamud

History and Biography: The Enlightenment, Vol. 1: An Interpretation, Peter Gay

Poetry: Nights and Days, James Merrill

Science, Philosophy, and Religion: La Vida, Oscar Lewis Translation: Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch, Gregory Rabassa; Casanova's History of My

Life, Willard Trask

Fiction: The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter, Katherine Anne Porter

History and Biography: A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, Arthur

M. Schlesinger, Jr.

Poetry: Buckdancer's Choice: Poems, James Dickey

Fiction: Herzog, Saul Bellow

History and Biography: The Life of Lenin, Louis Fisher

Poetry: The Far Field, Theodore Roethke

Science, Philosophy, and Religion: God and Golem, Inc.: A Comment on Certain Points

Where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion, Norbert Wiener

Fiction: The Centaur, John Updike

History and Biography: The Rise of the West, William H. McNeill

Poetry: Selected Poems, John Crowe Ransom

Science, Philosophy,

and Religion: Man-Made America, Christopher

Tunnard and Boris Pushkarev

Nonfiction: Henry James: Vol. II, The Conquest of London; Vol. III, The Middle Years,

Leon Edel

Poetry: Traveling Through the Dark, William Stafford

Nonfiction: The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects, Lewis

Mumford

Poetry: Poems, Alan Dugan

Nonfiction: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer

Poetry: The Woman at the Washington Zoo, Randall Jarrell

Nonfiction: James Joyce, Richard Ellman

Poetry: Life Studies, Robert Lowell

Nonfiction: Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame De Stael, J. Christopher Herold

Poetry: Words for the Wind, Theodore Roethke

Nonfiction: The Lion and the Throne, Catherine Drinker Bowen

Poetry: Promises: Poems, 1954-1956, Robert Penn Warren

Nonfiction: Russia Leaves the War, George F. Kennan

Poetry: Things of the World, Richard Wilbur

Nonfiction: An American in Italy, Herbert Kubly

Poetry: The Shield of Achilles, W.H. Auden

Nonfiction: The Measure of Man, Joseph W. Krutch

Poetry: The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, Wallace Stevens

Nonfiction: A Stillness at Appomattox, Bruce Catton

Poetry: Collected Poems, Conrad Aiken

Nonfiction: The Course of an Empire, Bernard A. De Voto

Poetry: Collected Poems, 1917-1952, Archibald MacLeish

Nonfiction: The Sea Around Us, Rachel Carson

Poetry: Collected Poems, Marianne Moore

Nonfiction: Herman Melville, Newton Arvin

Poetry: The Auroras of Autumn, Wallace Stevens

Nonfiction: Ralph Waldo, Ralph L. Rusk

Poetry: Paterson: Book III and Selected Poems, William Carlos Williams