FICTION  Mohsin Hamid, EXIT WEST  (Riverhead) Arundhati Roy, THE MINISTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS  (Knopf)   NONFICTION Masha Gessen, THE FUTURE IS HISTORY: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (Riverhead)     BIOGRAPHY Howard Markel, THE KELLOGGS: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek (Pantheon) Kenneth Whyte, HOOVER: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times (Knopf)   AUTOBIOGRAPHY Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, THE GIRL FROM THE METROPOL HOTEL: Growin Up in Communist Russia (Penguin)       View the complete list of NBCC finalists here. Winners of the NBCC awards will be announced on Thursday, March 15 in NYC at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium.  A finalists’ reading will be held on March 14 at 6:30 p.m. in the same location. Both events are free and open to the public. The National Book Critics Circle was founded in 1974 at New York’s Algonquin Hotel by a group of the most influential critics of the day, and awarded its first set of honors in 1975.  The NBCC now comprises more than 1,000 working critics and book-review editors throughout the country.  The NBCC annually bestows its awards in six categories, honoring the best books published in the past year in the United States.

THE MARSH KING’S DAUGHTER by Karen Dionne (G.P. Putman’s Sons) THE KELLOGGS: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek by Howard Markel (Pantheon Books) Congratulations to Ms. Dionne and Mr. Markel as well as their editors and publishers. View the complete list of 2018 Michigan Notable Books here. The Night for Notable celebration, hosted by the Library of Michigan Foundation and featuring author Richard Ford as keynote speaker, will take place in Detroit on April 7.  

What inspired Markel, a doctor, professor, historian, and author, to write this book?  He said, “After finding a treasure trove of papers and other archival materials documenting the Kellogg brothers’ lives, I knew there was a remarkable story worth telling. This family saga was more than the story of the creation of corn flakes or a feud between brothers, it was a compelling and important tale of modern medicine, nutrition, industry and wellness in America.”   Vicky Wilson, who edited the book, said, “The story of the Kellogg Brothers is a great American saga of know-how, instinct, curiosity, invention and determination.  It’s the building of a vast industry that changed how America lived and ate for more than seven decades, from post-Civil-War America, through the gilded age up to the Second World War.  It’s a kind of Magnificent Ambersons, mid-western American saga that gives us a changing world in the heart of the industrial age.” [caption id="attachment_7390" align="alignright" width="199"] Howard Markel
Credit: Joyce Ravid[/caption] THE KELLOGGS has garnered much praise from media outlets as well as authors: “A tale of grit, controversy, faith and the emergence of the ‘wellness’ movement. In the hands of Markel, a trained historian, physician, seasoned writer and chronicler of America, this tale comes alive. A fabulous read.” —Abraham Verghese, author of CUTTING FOR STONE “Howard Markel’s riveting, deeply researched new book covers vast territory: the saga of the squabbling Kellogg brothers (“magnificent showmen, resolute empire builders, and unwavering visionaries”), their mass-branding of breakfast cereals, their concept of ‘wellness,’ and their enormous influence on the diet of millions of Americans.  This book arrives at a pivotal moment in our own history when mass-marketing, showmanship, and the media deserve particularly deep study.  Markel’s incandescent scholarship and his incisive analysis shine through this book.  THE KELLOGGS can certainly be read as a biography of two visionaries (and their extended families), but it also deserves to be read as a case study by generations of future readers.” — Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize -winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer “This incredible story by itself would be sufficient for a book. Markel, however, goes much further . . .an engrossing adventure about the rise of Midwest America from the pioneering days of the Kellogg family to World War II with all of its failures and successes. Medicine, breakfast foods, and the Seventh Day Adventist Church are part of the story.” — Robert S. Davis, New York Journal of Books