National Book Awards Finalists ...

[Dave Monroe]

The New York Times
October 13, 2004
National Book Awards Finalists Include 9/11 Commission
Report
By MARIA NEWMAN
 
It was released this summer, and quickly made it to
the best-seller lists of many online book sellers. But
the 567-page book that today was named as a finalist
for a National Book Foundation award wasn't a steamy
romance or even a mystery novel that people toted to
the beach.

But read it people did. "The 9/11 Commission Report,"
the book version of the final report of the group
investigating the 2001 terrorist attacks, flew off the
shelves when it was published in July by W.W. Norton &
Company. Today, in an announcement made in St. Paul,
Minn., it was named as one of five finalists in the
nonfiction category by the venerable foundation.

The 9/11 book, with 117 pages of footnotes, was
nominated alongside a book about Shakespeare, another
about the life of a former prison inmate, another
about George Washington's revolutionary battles and
the last one about a civil rights-era murder.

The National Book Foundation makes awards in four
categories: young people's literature, nonfiction,
poetry and fiction. Finalists and winners are named by
indpendent panels of judges who are asked to pick what
they believe are the best books of the year. On its
Website, the foundation said it created the awards to
`to enhance the public's awareness of exceptional
books written by fellow Americans."

Harold Augenbraum, executive director of the
foundation, said that the 9/11 book was more than a
government accounting of what happened during one of
the worst episodes in American history. He said that
while he could not speak for the panel of judges who
chose the book as a finalist, he knew that the 9/11
report had been widely recognized as a gripping
narrative of the September 11 attacks.

He said that when he called Philip D. Zelikow, the
commission's staff director, and the final editor of
the reports, to tell him the work was named as a
finalist, Mr. Zelikow talked about how important it
was to those assembling the report to make it
accessible to readers.

"He was very eloquent about the writing process and
how important it had been to them," Mr. Augenbraum
said by telephone as he waited at the St. Paul airport
to return to New York. "They wanted it to be a
well-written piece of work in addition to having all
the facts so that people would read it and be engaged
by it."

The book, now also available in a hardcover edition,
is still selling at bookstores across the country,
possibly boosted by interest in the presidential
campaign and the attention to Iraq and terrorism,
booksellers said. But it is also a good read, they
said

"As I understand it, it's a good narrative of an
important period in our time," said Barbara Meade, an
owner of Politics & Prose, a bookstore and coffeehouse
in Washington. `We're still selling it."

Her store sold 400 copies of the $10 paperback edition
in July when it was first released. When Norton
decided to put out a hardback edition, with an index,
that would sell for $19.95, she said, "we were
suspicious" that nobody would want it.

But in September, she said, her store sold 69
hardcover editions and 73 of the paperback editions.

A publicist for Norton said the company published 1.5
million copies of the paperback edition and 75,000
copies in hardcover. The publicist said more than a
million copies of the paperback edition have been
sold, but she did not know how many have been sold in
hardback.

Officials at the book foundation said the only other
time a government report was nominated was in 1973,
when one of the finalists was "Attica: The official
report of the New York State Special Commission on
Attica," about prison riots at the prison. It did not
win.

The winner of each category will be announced at a
benefit dinner and ceremony Nov. 17 in New York City.
Each winner will receive a bronze statue and a $10,000
cash award. There is no word yet about who would
receive the cash prize if the 9/11 book is selected in
the nonfiction category.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/13/books/12CND-BOOK.html


		
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