Cheever: A Life
Blake Bailey (Knopf)

Await Your Reply
Dan Chaon (Ballantine)

A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon
Neil Sheehan (Random House)

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders
Daniyal Mueenuddin (Norton)

Big Machine
Victor LaValle (Spiegel & Grau)

The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science
Richard Holmes (Pantheon)

Stitches
David Small (Norton)

Shop Class as Soulcraft
Matthew B. Crawford (Penguin Press)

Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi
Geoff Dyer (Pantheon)

Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
David Grann (Doubleday)

The complete list of NPR’s Best Books of 2009 recommendations. Each critic’s list is presented separately. Read excerpts from each book on NPR.org…

Recommended by Glen Weldon
(“The Five Best Books To Share With Your Friends”)
* Conquest of the Useless by Werner Herzog
* Asterios Polyp,edited by David Mazzucchelli
* The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, by Lydia Davis
* The Supergirls, by Mike Madrid
* Everything Matters!, by Ron Currie Jr.

Recommended by John McAlley
(“Big And Beautiful: Best Gift Books of 2009″)
* Norman Rockwell: Behind The Camera, by Ron Schick
* The TOON Treasury of Classic Children’s Comics
* A New Literary History of America edited by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors
* Painting Today, edited by Tony Godfrey
* The Sartorialist by Scott Schuman
* * Charley Harper: An Illustrated Life, by Charley Harper and Todd Oldham
* The TOON Treasury of Classic Children’s Comics, edited by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly
* Science: The Definitive Visual Guide, by Adam Hart-Davis
* Photo-wisdom: Master Photographers And Their Art, by Lewis Blackwell
* Q&A’s from Vanity Fair’s Proust Questionnaire by Graydon Carter, Illustrated by Risko
* Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans edited by Sarah Greenough

Recommended by Booksellers Daniel Goldin, Rona Brinlee and Lucia Silva
(“Season’s Readings: Top Picks From Indie Booksellers”)

Recommended by Daniel Goldin
* The Hour Between, by Sebastian Stuart
* Await Your Reply, by Dan Chaon
* Little Bee, by Chris Cleave
* Blame, by Michelle Huneven
* Raymond Carver: A Writer’s Life, by Carol Sklenicka

Recommended by Rona Brinlee
* Bad Things Happen, by Harry Dolan
* Going Away Shoes, by Jill McCorkle
* Logicomix: An Epic Search For Truth, by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou
* This Is Where I Leave You, by Jonathan Tropper
* The Tree That Time Built, selected by Mary Ann Hoberman and Linda Winston

Recommended by Lucia Silva
* The Paris Review Interviews edited by Philip Gourevitch
* Vanity Fair’s Proust Questionnaire, edited by Graydon Carter
* Pattern In The Carpet: A Personal History With Jigsaws, by Margaret Drabble
* The Contact Sheet, edited by Steve Crist
* Wallace Stevens: Selected Poems, by Wallace Stevens, edited by John N. Serio

Recommended by T. Susan Chang
(“The 10 Best Cookbooks of 2009″)
* The Pleasures of Cooking for One by Judith Jones
* Asian Dumplings: Mastering Gyoza, Spring Rolls, Samosas, and More, by Andrea Nguyen
* Clean Food: A Seasonal Guide to Eating Close to the Source, by Terry Walters
* Gourmet Today: More Than 1000 All-New Recipes for the Contemporary Kitchen, by Ruth Reichl
* Stir: Mixing It Up In The Italian Tradition by Barbara Lynch
* Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking, by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo, Hardcover
* Savory Baking by Mary Cech
* Peter Reinhart’s Artisan Breads Every Day, by Peter Reinhart
* The Craft of Baking by Karen DeMasco and Mindy Fox
* Rose’s Heavenly Cakes, by Rose Levy Beranbaum

Recommended by Alan Cheuse
(“Picks To Warm A Winter’s Night”)
* American Fantastic Tales edited by Peter Straub
* Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing, edited by Ilan Stavans
* The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard by J.G. Ballard
* Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son, by Michael Chabon
* City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and ’70s by Edmund White
* Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson, Illustrated by John Lawrence

Recommended by Jessa Crispin
(“A World Of Novels: Picks For Best Foreign Fiction”)
* Season of Ash: A Novel In Three Acts, by Jorge Volpi
* There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby, by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
* The Armies, by Evelio Rosero
* The Confessions of Noa Weber, by Gail Hareven
* The Twin, by Gerbrand Bakker

Recommended by Jonathan Hunt
(“Best Young Adult Fiction 2009″)
* Charles And Emma: The Darwin’s Leap Of Faith, by Deborah Heiligman
* Lips Touch: Three Times, by Laini Taylor
* The Lost Conspiracy, by Francis Hardinge
* Marcelo In The Real World, by Francisco X
* When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead

Recommended by Librarian Nancy Pearl
(“Under-The-Radar Gift Books”)
* Spooner, by Peter Dexter
* When Wanders Cease To Roam: A Traveler’s Journal Of Staying put, by Vivian Swift
* The Good Soldiers, by David Finkel
* Liar, by Justine Larbalestier
* Going Bovine, by Libba Bray
* In The Town All Year ‘Round,by Rotraut Susanne Berner
* Bubble Trouble, by Margaret Mahy
* Travels In A Thin Country: A Journey Through Chile, by Sara Wheeler

Recommended by Heller McAlpin
(“The Year’s Best Memoirs”)
* Stitches, by David Small
* Somewhere Towards The End, by Diana Athill
* Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, And The Last Days Of WASP Splendor, by Tad Friend
* Camus, A Romance, by Elizabeth Hawes
* The Slippery Year: A Meditation On Happily Ever After, by Melanie Gideon

Recommended by Lynn Neary
(“Best Books For A Book Club”)
* Cutting For Stone, by Abraham Verghese
* The Interrogative Mood: A Novel?, by Padgett Powell
* Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro
* A Reliable Wife, by Robert Goolrick
* In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, by Daniyal Mueenuddin

Recommended by Ketzel Levine
(“2009’s Crop Of Great Gardening Books”)
* Farm City: The Education Of An Urban Farmer, by Novella Carpente
* The American Meadow Garden: Creating A Natural Alternative To The Traditional Lawn, by John Greenlee
* Rodale’s Ultimate Encyclopedia Of Organic Gardening, by Fern Marshall Bradley, Barbara Ellis, and Ellen Phillips
* Bulb, by Anna Pavord
* Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother And Other Botanical Atoricities, by Amy Stewart

Recommended by John Freeman
(“The Best Debut Fiction of 2009″)
* Once The Shore, by Paul Yoon
* Tinkers, by Paul Harding
* In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, by Daniyal Mueenuddin
* An Elegy For Easterly: Stories, by Petina Gappah
* Censoring An Iranian Love Story, by Shahriar Mandanipour

Recommended by John Freeman
(“The Mile High Club: ’09’s Best Airplane Books”)
* The Old Man And Me, by Elaine Dundy
* The Flying Troutmans: A Novel, by Miriam Toews
* Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life And Language In The Amazonian Jungle, by Daniel Everett
* American Nerd: The Story Of My People, by Benjamin Nugent
* How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read, by Pierre Bayard
* Geneology Of Morals, by Friedrich Nietzsche

Recommended by Maureen Corrigan
(“The Best Books Of 2009″)
* The Woman Behind The New Deal, by Kirstin Downey
* Fordlandia: The Rise And Fall Of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City, by Greg Grandin
* Dancing In The Dark, by Morris Dickstein
* Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story, by Isabel Gillies
* The James Deans, by Reed Farrell Coleman
* The Believers, by Zoe Heller
* A Gate At The Stairs, by Lorrie Moore
* Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin
* The Man In The Wooden Hat, by Jane Gardam
* The Financial Lives Of The Poets, by Jess Walter

Recommended by Steve Weinberg
(“Fit To Print: Top 5 Current Affairs Books Of 2009″)
* American Original: The Life And Constitution Of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, by Joan Biskupic
* The Good Soldiers, by David Finkel
* Strength In What Remains, by Tracy Kidder
* The Healing Of America: A Global Quest For Better, Cheaper, And Fairer Health Care, by T.R. Reid
* When Everything Changed: The Amazing Story Of American Women From 1960 To The Present, by Gail Collins

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: A Life
By Michael Burlingame
Johns Hopkins

Measured, psychologically astute, authoritative when it can be, Michael Burlingame’s exhaustive narrative (2,024 pages!) is unafraid of ambiguity and indeterminacy. This is the life of Lincoln for our times.
[Read Christopher Hitchens's full review from the July/August Atlantic]

THE CHILDREN’S BOOK: A Novel
By A. S. Byatt
Knopf

Byatt has wrought a richly detailed, decade-spanning, at once Olympian and pointillist masterpiece. To read this gorgeous bolt of fiction is to fully enter a world.
[Read the full review from the October Atlantic]

THE THIRD REICH TRILOGY (Concluding With The Third Reich at War)
By Richard J. Evans
Penguin

Evans’s cool, crisply argued three-volume chronicle will be for a generation the definitive general history of Nazi Germany in English.

IT’S BEGINNING TO HURT: Stories
By James Lasdun
FSG

This collection of short stories illuminates the everyday agonies of the mind, its anxieties, obsessions, doubts, and yearnings. Lasdun pins each observation to the page with grace and exactitude.
[Read the full review from the September Atlantic]

MRS. WOOLF AND THE SERVANTS: An Intimate History of Domestic Life in Bloomsbury
By Alison Light
Bloomsbury

In her elegant, sparkling book, Light marries social and literary criticism as she probes the deeply intimate, often sordid, always fraught relationship between women servants and their female employers.

1. The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)
2. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (2003)
3. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama (2004)
4. Masterworks of the Classical Haida Mythtellers trans Robert Bringhurst (2002)
5. Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky (2006)
6. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
7. Life of Pi by Yann Martel (2002)
8. Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth by Margaret Atwood (2008)
9. Atonement by Ian McEwan (2001)
10. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (2003)

FICTION
* The Anthologist, by Nicholson Baker
* Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel
* Finch, by Jeff Vandermeer
* The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, by Lydia Davis
* White is for Withcing, by Helen Oyeyemi
* Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli
* Blame, by Michelle Huneven
* Fying, by Eric Kraft
* Every Man Dies Alone, by Hans Fallada
* Brothers, by Yu Hua

NONFICTION
* Lit, by Mary Karr
* The Age of Wonder, by Richard Holmes
* The Last Journey, by Darrell Griffin Jr. & Sr.
* Charles Dickens, by Michael Slater
* The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday, by Neil MacFarquhar
* My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness, by Adina Hoffman
* Somewhare Towards the End, by Diana Athill
* Banquet at Delmonicos, by Barry Werth
* Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, by David Eagleman
* Lords of Finance, by Liaquat Ahamed

BEYOND CATEGORY
* Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way, by Francis Mallmann and Peter Kaminsky
* Map As Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography, by Katharine Harmon and Gayle Clemans
* The Letters of Van Gogh: The Complete Illustrated and Annotated Edition
* Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary
* The Red Book, by C .G. Jung
* Garner’s Modern American Usage, by Bryan Garner
* The Letters of Samuel Beckett 1929-1940
* The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957-1965, by Sam Stephenson and W. Eugene Smith
* Popular Obsessions, by Paul Nicklen
* Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City, by Eric W. Sanderson

Folio also compiled a list of people to watch…

(This handy tool was created using Grazr, an easy way to view information without having to follow links all over the Web.)

• Absurdistan. By Gary Shteyngart
• The Collected Stories Of Amy Hempel. By Amy Hempel
• The Emperor’s Children. By Claire Messud
• The Lay Of The Land. By Richard Ford
• Special Topics In Calamity Physics. By Marisha Pessl

Nonfiction:

• Falling Through The Earth. By Danielle Trussoni
• The Looming Tower. By Lawrence Wright
• Mayflower. By Nathaniel Philbrick
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma. By Michael Pollan
• The Places In Between. By Rory Stewart

• Cover of the Year – “Flood in the Oval Office,” The New Yorker
• Best Celebrity Covers (tie) – Julianne Moore in Harper’s Bazaar; Busta Rhymes in VIBE
• Best News Cover – “Watch Your Back Mountain,” The New Yorker
• Best Concept Cover – “The End of Cowboy Diplomacy,” TIME
• Best Fashion Cover – 2005 Style Issue, Departures
• Best Service Cover – 2006 Fitness Issue, Time Out New York
• Best Cover Line – “Rocket Man,” The Economist

1. The Marlboro Man
2. Big Brother
3. King Arthur
4. Santa Claus (St. Nick)
5. Hamlet
6. Dr. Frankenstein’s Monster
7. Siegfried
8. Sherlock Holmes
9. Romeo and Juliet
10. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

1. Jay Gatsby, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
2. Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, 1951
3. Humbert Humbert, Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 1955
4. Leopold Bloom, Ulysses, James Joyce, 1922
5. Rabbit Angstrom, Rabbit, Run, John Updike, 1960
6. Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1902
7. Atticus Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960
8. Molly Bloom, Ulysses, James Joyce, 1922
9. Stephen Dedalus, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce, 1916
10. Lily Bart, The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton, 1905

A judging panel of 52 magazine editors, design directors, art directors and photography editors was charged with picking the 40 top covers from a pool of 444 images representing 136 magazines. The contest was open to all consumer magazines published in the United States. Magazines were invited to submit up to four entries from their respective publications. Entrants were also encouraged to nominate covers of magazines that were not published by their company or were no longer being published.