The National Book Award finalists for nonfiction will be announced on Think Out Loud on October 12th in partnership with Literary Arts and the National Book Foundation.

While we wait to learn the judges' selections, we asked three Oregonians to share their favorite nonfiction books published this year. Read on to learn about their top picks, and then let us know which nonfiction book you think should be nominated for a National Book Award.

credit: John Rosman / OPB

Barry Sanders, Portland Writer and Professor, author of A is for Ox: Violence, Electronic Media, and the Silencing of the Written Word.

Book of the Year: The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, by Stephen Greenblatt

From lizards to leaves, from tumbleweeds to river rocks, it is in the nature of things to move or be moved.  The entire solar system revolves. Stars spin in the night. Planets circle overhead. The Earth hurls around the sun at 1,000 miles per hour. From the microscopic atom to the largest eye-popping creatures, every single thing is in motion. Throughout the length of our lives, we crave constant motion and, as Newton’s First Law predicts, bodies in motion tend to stay in motion. 

Such a view may sound terribly modern, but over 2,000 years ago, the philosopher Lucretius set this idea in motion in his “On The Nature of Things.” As Stephen Greenblatt tells in this most wonderfully charged story — both about the long journey of the idea and the strange career of the “De Rerum Natura” — Lucretius believed that all of nature followed strict laws of motion and that nothing comes to us out of the ordinary, even the most seemingly startling of events. Instead of miracles, Lucretius “posited what he called a ‘swerve’ — an unexpected, unpredictable movement of matter.” Greenblatt goes on to describe how Lucretius’ little book, which came to shape the modern world through its insistence on beauty and pleasure in the Renaissance, itself followed an elusive and meandering course, under the influence, we might say, of the power of the unseen swerve. Read this book and you will give up caring about straight lines and shortest distances. Learn to dodge and skip and move sideways. Learn to swerve. That way, to paraphrase King Lear, revolution lies.

Honorable Mentions:

Empire of the Summer Moon, by S.C. Gwynne

Life Itself, by Roger Ebert

In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson

credit: John Rosman / OPB

Amy Wren,  Employee at Powell's Books

Book of the Year: The Chronology of Water, by Lidia Yuknavitch

I'm not normally drawn to the memoir, generally sticking to books with facts and figures, but this one pulled me in. Somehow The Chronology of Water made me feel angry, joyful, and inspired all at once. But none of those words can even begin to describe how I felt when it was all over. While Yuknavitch might have had a much harder life then most, she captures things that are exactly how I feel or have felt. It's a memoir that we can all relate to, in one form or another. While her experiences may be unique, we can all relate to just trying to get by, and keeping our heads above water.

Honorable Mentions:

The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood, by James Gleick

Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West, by Dorothy Wickenden

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, by Charles C. Mann

credit: John Rosman / OPB

Jeff Baker, Book Editor at The Oregonian

Book of the Year: Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961, by Paul Hendrickson

In 1934, Ernest Hemingway, on top of the world, bought a fishing boat, The Pilar, named after a shrine in Spain and also a secret nickname for his second wife, Pauline. No ordinary boat, it was, as Hendrickson makes clear, maybe the real love of his life and surely a talisman for him during the long, sad decline of his life's second half. This is not a conventional biography but a deeply researched, intensely felt meditation on who Hemingway was and what he meant. Satellite figures in his life — a deckhand, a young friend in Cuba — have their stories told and so, most tragically, does his youngest son, the doomed compulsive transvestite Gregory Hemingway. Beautifully written and empathetic, Hemingway's Boat upends all preconceptions of what you think you know about Hemingway and leaves you admiring the courage to create against so much pain. Macho to a fault, repressing the feminine side. Bullying and mean, hiding and fighting the fear of self-destruction that overwhelmed him.

Honorable Mentions:

Townie, by Andre Dubus III

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, by Manning Marable

Sex and the River Styx, by Edward Hoagland

The Psychopath Test: A Journey through the Madness Industry, by Jon Ronson

What are your favorite nonfiction books published this year? Comment below.