Hospitality consists in a little fire, a little food and an immense quiet. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

2006 National Book Award Winners

Fiction: Richard Powers, The Echo Maker (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Nonfiction: Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (Houghton Mifflin)

Poetry: Nathaniel Mackey, Splay Anthem (New Directions)

Young People's Literature: M.T. Anderson, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume One: The Pox Party (Candlewick Press)

From Our Armchair to Yours ...