ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


College
No. 3, March 1970

&  Research
Libraries NEWS

ACRL News Issue (A) of College & Research Libraries, Vol. 31, No. 2

Judges Announced 

for Twenty-first National Book Awards

The appointment of the seven panels of 
judges for the twenty-first National Book 
Awards has been announced by Mason W. 
Gross, president of Rutgers, The State Univer­
sity (New Jersey) and chairman of the Na­
tional Book Committee which administers the 
annual Awards program. The Awards cere­
mony will be held Wednesday, March 4, 1970, 
in Philharmonic Hall, Lincoln Center, New 
York City.

The National Book Awards consist of prizes 
of $1,000 each, presented annually for books 
which the seven panels of judges consider the 
most distinguished works written (or translat­
ed) by an American citizen and published in 
the United States in the preceding year. (The 
Sciences’ Award alternates with the Philosophy 
and Religion Award, the latter to be presented 
in 1970 for books published in 1968 and 
1969.)

Judges, five of whom are previous National 
Book Awards nominees, have been appointed 
in the following categories:

A r t s  a n d  L e t t e r s

George Boas, writer and educator, Fellow of the 
Center for Advanced Studies at Wesleyan, 
and author of twenty books, the most recent of

which are The Challenge of Science, The Cult 
o f C hildhood‚ and Vox Populi, Essays in the 
History o f an Id ea; Bergen Evans, professor of 
English at Northwestern University, consultant 
to the National Foundation for the Humanities, 
editor, author of, among others, Dictionary of 
Quotations‚ and coauthor of A Dictionary of 
Contemporary American Usage; William Phil­
lips, chairman of the editorial board of Partisan 
Review, professor of English at Rutgers, re­
viewer, and author, whose most recent publi­
cation is A Sense o f the Present, a book of 
criticism.

C h i l d r e n ’s  L i t e r a t u r e

Barbara Bader, juvenile editor of The Kirkus 
Review Service, formerly children’s librarian 
at Queens Borough Public Library, and head 
of the children’s department of the White 
Plains Public Library; Frank G. Jennings, edi­
tor-at-large for the Saturday Review, Educa­
tional Consultant of The New World Founda­
tion, director of college relations at Columbia 
University Teachers College, and author of This 
Is Reading; William Jay Smith, serving a sec­
ond term as Consultant in Poetry to the Li­
brary of Congress, author of several books of 
poetry, including Poems: 1947-1957 and The



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Tin Can an d Other P oem s (both National 
Book Award nominees for Poetry), as well as 
books of criticism and translations and I f  I 
H ad a B oat and Mr. Sm ith an d O ther N on­
sense, poems for children.

F i c t i o n

Barbara Epstein, an editor of T h e N ew  York 
R eview  o f  B ooks since its inception; Peter 
Mathiessen, author of At Play in th e  F ields o f 
t h e  L o r d  (a  1966 National Book Award nomi­
nee for Fiction) and the forthcoming Sal Di 
P uedes: C esar C havez an d  th e  N ew  A m erican 
R evolution, presently working on a new novel; 
Harvey Swados, novelist and literary journal­
ist, a member of the Literature Faculty of 
Sarah Lawrence College, and author of T h e 
W ill (a  1964 National Book Award nominee 
for Fiction) and the forthcoming C hildren o f 
Our Tim e.

H i s t o r y  a n d  B i o g r a p h y

Marquis Childs, author and political commen­
tator, served as a special lecturer at Columbia 
University School of Journalism and E ric W. 
Allen Memorial Lecturer at the University of 
Oregon, whose most recent novels are T he 
P eacem akers and Taint o f  In n o cen ce; James 
Thomas Flexner, author of fifteen books on the 
American past and winner of the Parkman 
Prize for writing history as literature, whose 
current major work is a biography of George 
Washington, the third volume of which is 
scheduled for 1970 publication; Willie Morris, 
editor-in-chief of H a r p ers and author, received 
the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship prize 
for N orth Tow ards H om e, an autobiographical 
novel, and taught at Yale in the Poynter Fel­
lowship in 1969.

P o e t r y

Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, for­
mer teacher, widely known speaker and writer 
on political, economic, and social problems, 
poet and author, whose most recent books are 
T h e L im its o f  P ow er and T h e Y ear o f  th e 
P eo p le ; William Meredith, professor of English 
at Connecticut College, poet and critic ( T h e 
W reck o f  t h e  T hresher an d  O ther P oem s was 
a 1965 National Book Award nominee for 
Poetry), is one of twelve Chancellors of the 
Academy of American Poets; Kenneth Rex­
roth, poet, critic, translator, columnist for the 
San Francisco Exam iner, and author of T he 
D ragon and t h e  Unicorn, In  D efen se o f  th e 
E arth, C om p lete P oem s (all National Book 
Award nominees for Poetry), and the forth­
coming C o llecte d  Shorter Poems.

P h i l o s o p h y  a n d  R e l i g i o n

Reverend William Sloane Coffin, Jr., University

 Chaplain and Pastor of the Church of 
Christ at Yale University, author of articles for 
T h e Nation, Saturday R eview , Christian C en­
tury, and Parents M agazine, and activist on 
social and political issues; Nancy Wilson Ross, 
novelist and social historian, author of T h e 
W orld o f  Z en and T h ree W ays o f  Asian W is­
dom , as well as four novels; Stewart L. Udall, 
former Secretary of the Interior, author of T he 
Quiet Crisis and 1976: A genda fo r  T om orrow , 
now associated with The Overview Group, a 
pioneering international consulting firm work­
ing for governments and industries to create a 
better environment for man.

T r a n s l a t i o n

Paul Engle, director of International Writing 
Program and Clark Ansley Professor of Crea­
tive Writing at the University of Iowa, editor, 
reviewer, lecturer, author, and poet; Donald 
Keene, professor of Japanese at Columbia Uni­
versity, author, and translator whose books in­
clude Anthology o f Jap an ese Literature, Living 
Japan , Jap an ese Literature, and, most recently, 
T h e Ja p a n e se D iscover E u rop e and a transla­
tion of the play, F rien ds; Maurice Valency, 
Brander Matthews Professor of Dramatic Liter­
ature at Columbia University, adaptor, libret­
tist, playwright, and author of In  Praise o f 
L o v e, T h e F low er an d t h e  C astle, and T h e 
B reakin g String.

Donors of the National Book Awards in­
clude the American Booksellers Association, the 
American Book Publishers Council, the Asso­
ciation of American University Presses, the 
Book Manufacturers’ Institute, the Children’s 
Book Council and, for the first time this year, 
the National Association of College Stores. The 
prize-program, now in its twenty-first year, has 
since 1960 been administered by the National 
Book Committee, Inc., a nonprofit membership 
group of citizens founded in 1954 to foster the 
wiser and wider use of books. Roger L. Ste­
vens, chairman of the Board of Trustees of the 
John F . Kennedy Center for the Performing 
Arts, is chairman of the Awards Advisory Com­
mittee which is responsible for supervising the 
Awards. The Awards Advisory Committee is 
broadly representative of American letters and 
of the public interest and includes representa­
tives of each of the donor organizations and 
others appointed by the chairman of the Na­
tional Book Committee.

The Awards ceremony will be followed by a 
cocktail reception for the winners, honored 
guests, and representatives of the book review 
media. Surrounding the Awards ceremony dur­
ing that week will be a program of special 
events scheduled for visiting book reviewers by 
varied book industry and literary associations.

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