Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner (Doubleday) has been awarded the 2007 National Book Award for Non-fiction. Based on more than 50,000 documents and hundreds of interviews, and hailed by The Wall Street Journal as "truly extraordinary . . . the best book ever written on a case of espionage," this book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Weiner offers the first truly definitive history of the CIA.

Other NBA nominees included Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat (Alfred A. Knopf) and Ralph Ellison: A Biography by Arnold Rampersad (Alfred A. Knopf) for non-fiction, and Like You'd Understand, Anyway by Jim Shepard (Alfred A. Knopf) for fiction.

Also at the National Book Award ceremony, Knopf/Vintage author Joan Didion was given the 2007 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Norman Mailer has died at the age of 84. Author of such contemporary classics as The Naked and the Dead, An American Dream, and The Executioner's Song, Mailer has left behind a tremendous legacy of fiction, non-fiction and essays. His most recently published work of fiction was the imaginative The Castle and the Forest. In October 2007, Random House published his highly personal, provocative and meditative work of dialogues On God: An Uncommon Conversation.