Following yesterday’s announcement of the poetry longlist, the National Book Awards today announces the nonfiction nominees.

The titles include one that hasn’t been published yet, Walter Isaacson’s The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, (Simon & Schuster, Oct 7; Vintage Espanol, 11/4; Thorndike, 1/7/15).

The list is dominated by weighty tomes, so it is refreshing that it also includes Roz Chast’s graphic memoir, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, (Macmillan/Bloomsbury USA).

Continuing a family tradition, Evan Osnos, son of Peter Osnos, former Washington Post reporter and founder of Public Affairs (now an imprint of Perseus), is nominated for his book, based on his reporting on China for the New Yorker, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China, (Macmillan/ FSG)

In this age of large corporate publishing, independent publisher W.W. Norton published 3 of the ten titles on the list, tying with Macmillan.

Links, in the list below, are to the National Book Award annotations.

Roz Chast, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (Macmillan/Bloomsbury USA)

John Demos, The Heathen School: A Story of Hope and Betrayal in the Age of the Early Republic
(RH/ Knopf)

Anand Gopal, No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes
(Macmillan/Holt)

Nigel Hamilton, The Mantle of Command: FDR at War, 1941 – 1942 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Walter Isaacson, The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution (Simon & Schuster)

John Lahr, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (Norton)

Evan Osnos, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China (Macmillan/FSG)

Ronald C. Rosbottom, When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, 1940-1944
(Hachette/ Little, Brown)

Matthew Stewart, Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic (Norton)

Edward O. Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence (Norton/Liveright)

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