knopf and marcelle thoreau for far north, published by farrar, straus and giroux.and the winner of the 2009 national book award in fiction is, "let the great world spin" by: mcginn. [applause] [applause] [applause] >> i came down on a subway tonight from uptown. i was with my brother, roland and my wife, alison, and the two parts of my life were there together. it was ireland and it was new york and american of, and you know, happiness is so hard to gauge. it is like coming to have a book is an enormous privilege. to have a reader is an enormous privilege and to have your colleagues read your book and to vote for your book is extraordinary. of course literature is not the olympics and everybody who is here tonight has won in all sorts of ways, and all i want to say is stories our democracy. they are the purest form of an engagement. as somebody who has come from ireland and come here, itm extraordinary league bonnert by the fact that it seems to me that the american literature is able to embrace and american publishing is able to embrace the other, and the best hon

became apparent, most especially from his writings and his manner he was precisely the sort of student strausanted teachers to imagine. smart, deep, wise, and humanly ad mirable. an immigrant from israel to new jersey at age 8, yuval had come to the committee on social thought from a staff position on capitol hill working for newt gingrich, a job he landed fresh from completing his undergraduate studies in political science at american university. his bachelor's thesis, a youthfully ambitious account of the role of reason and social thought from antiquity to modern times [laughter] was published in 2000 under the title, the tyranny of reason. although distinguishing himself in graduate school, yuval fortunately for us was drawn to more public affairs than professorat te. joined president's task on bio ethics serving splendidly in several capacities and rising to become the executive direct are to. he served associate director of the white house policy council in the george w. bush administration where his portfolio included health care, bioethics and culture of life issues before taking up re