Annal:2004 National Book Award for Nonfiction
From AwardAnnals
Results of the National Book Award in the year 2004. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age
- 2004 NBA–Nonfiction winner
- 2005 Pulitzer–History finalist
- 2004 NBCC–Nonfiction finalist
- Score: 22.54
In 1925, Detroit was a smoky swirl of jazz and speakeasies, assembly lines and fistfights. The advent of automobiles had brought workers from around the globe to compete for manufacturing jobs, and tensions often flared with the KKK in ascendance and violence rising. Ossian Sweet, a proud Negro doctor-grandson of a slave-had made the long climb from the ghetto to a home of his own in a previously all-white neighborhood. Yet just after his arrival, a mob gathered outside his house; suddenly, shots rang out: Sweet, or one of his defenders, had accidentally killed…
- 2005 Pulitzer–History winner
- 2004 NBA–Nonfiction finalist
- Score: 16.55
Six months after the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution was all but lost. A powerful British force had routed the Americans at New York, occupied three colonies, and advanced within sight of Philadelphia. George Washington lost ninety percent of his army and was driven across the Delaware River. Panic and despair spread through the states.
Yet, as David Hackett Fischer recounts in this riveting history, Washington—and many other Americans—refused to let the Revolution die. Even as the British and Germans spread their troops across New Jersey,…
Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett
- 2004 NBA–Nonfiction finalist
- Score: 6.54
Life On the Outside tells the story of Elaine Bartlett, who spent sixteen years in Bedford Hills prison for selling cocaine-a first offense under New York’s harsh Rockefeller drug laws. The book opens on the morning of January 26, 2000, when she is set free, having received clemency from the governor. At forty-two, Elaine has virtually nothing: no money, no job, no real home.
What she does have is a large and troubled family, including four children, who live in a decrepit Lower East Side housing project. “I left one prison to come home to another,”…
Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
- 2005 Pulitzer–Biography finalist
- 2004 LATimes–Biography finalist
- 2004 NBA–Nonfiction finalist
- 2004 NBCC–Biography finalist
- Score: 24.55
A young man from the provinces—a man without wealth, connections, or university education—moves to London. In a remarkably short time he becomes the greatest playwright not just of his age but of all time. His works appeal to urban sophisticates and first-time theatergoers; he turns politics into poetry; he recklessly mingles vulgar clowning and philosophical subtlety. How is such an achievement to be explained?
Will in the World interweaves a searching account of Elizabethan England with a vivid narrative of the playwright’s life. We see Shakespeare…
The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
- 2004 NBA–Nonfiction finalist
- Score: 6.54
Nearly three thousand people died in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In Lower Manhattan, on a field in Pennsylvania, and along the banks of the Potomac, the United States suffered the single largest loss of life from an enemy attack on its soil.
In November 2002 the United States Congress and President George W. Bush established by law the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission. This independent, bipartisan panel was directed to examine the facts and circumstances surrounding the…
