Caro Wins 3rd Critics Circle Award

Robert Caro's and Andrew Solomon's exhaustively researched tomes and Ben Fountain's penetrating war novel are among the winners of 2013's National Book Critics Circle Award on Thursday. Caro's The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (our review), the fourth volume in the series, won in the biography category. It's Caro's third NBCC award. Solomon's Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity (our book bag) beat out favorite Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo in the nonfiction list. Debut novelist Fountain's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (our reviews here and here) also beat out contender NW, by Zadie Smith, for the fiction award. Leanne Shapton's Swimming Studies won the autobiography award, Marina Waner's Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights (our review), received the criticism prize, while D. A. Powell's Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys was cited for poetry.