9/11 report one of five books up for award

The final report of the 9/11 commission led the list of finalists for the National Book Awards announced Wednesday.

The commission’s report was among five finalists in the nonfiction category. The authorized edition published by W.W. Norton has been praised as a compelling narrative and has sold well too, with more than 1 million books in print.

Government reports have traditionally been considered bland and unreadable, so the inclusion is unusual if not unprecedented. In 1973, a report by a special commission in New York on a deadly riot at the state prison in Attica two years earlier was nominated but did not win.

The National Book Foundation will announce the winners at a dinner Nov. 17 in New York. Each winner receives $10,000 plus a bronze statue; finalists get a bronze medal and $1,000.

The nominees for young people’s literature: Deb Caletti, “Honey, Baby, Sweetheart”; Pete Hautman, “Godless”; Laban Carrick Hill, “Harlem Stomp!: A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance”; Shelia P. Moses, “The Legend of Buddy Bush”; and Julie Anne Peters, “Luna: A Novel.”

Nonfiction nominees: Kevin Boyle, “Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age”; David Hackett Fischer, “Washington’s Crossing”; Jennifer Gonnerman, “Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett”; Stephen Greenblatt, “Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare”; and the 9/11 commission, “The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States -- Authorized Edition.”

Poetry: William Heyen, “Shoah Train”; Donald Justice, “Collected Poems”; Carl Phillips, “The Rest of Love”; Cole Swensen, “Goest”; and Jean Valentine, “Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965-03.”

In fiction: Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, “Madeleine Is Sleeping”; Christine Schutt, “Florida”; Joan Silber, “Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories”; Lily Tuck, “The News From Paraguay”; and Kate Walbert, “Our Kind: A Novel in Stories.”

Novelist Judy Blume will be given an honorary award.