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 The 2006 National Book Awards: Nonfiction The National Book Award for Nonfiction has been bestowed upon some of our most gifted thinkers, from Gore Vidal >See more National Book Award winners and finalists Timothy Egan -- Winner
In an interview with The Seattle Times, Timothy Egan said that when a representative of the National Book Foundation called him to give him the news that he was a 2006 finalist for The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, he thought it was a joke: "I parried with him for about 10 minutes, thinking that it was one of my friends," he laughed.
 Taylor Branch
Taylor Branch is an author and historian best known for his acclaimed trilogy of books chronicling the life and accomplishments of Martin Luther King, Jr. -- the latest is At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68. "I would like my readers to entertain the core notion that civil rights history is not a quaint tale of yesteryear, but rather our best model for the urgent task of understanding and refining democracy," he reflects in our interview.
Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Rajiv Chandrasekaran -- an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post and the paper's former Baghdad bureau chief -- somehow found time apart from his day job to write Imperial Life in the Emerald City -- an unprecedented account of life in Baghdad's Green Zone. The moonlighting was well worth it, as it earned him a 2006 National Book Award nomination for his first published book.
Peter Hessler
A Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, Peter Hessler studied English literature at Princeton and Oxford before heading to China as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1996 -- and his experience teaching English there has so far inspired two critically acclaimed books, including Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present.
Lawrence Wright
An award-winning author, screenwriter, and staff writer for The New Yorker, Lawrence Wright has won acclaim for his in-depth investigations into groups from evangelical Christians to Al-Qaeda. He's even written a one-man play, "My Trip to al-Qaeda," about his adventures in researching The Looming Tower, his National Book Award contender.
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