Nonfiction: Philip Gura, American Transcendentalism, Farrar, Straus; Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848, Oxford University Press; Harriet Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, Doubleday; Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA, Doubleday; Alan Weisman, The World Without Us, Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s.

Biography: Tim Jeal, Stanley: The Impossible Life Of Africa’s Greatest Explorer, Yale University Press; Hermione Lee, Edith Wharton, Knopf; Arnold Rampersad, Ralph Ellison, Knopf; John Richardson, The Life Of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932, Knopf; Claire Tomalin, Thomas Hardy, Penguin Press.