Best nonfiction 2004

One of the enduring mysteries in literary history is how a bright but unsophisticated Stratford lad, within relatively few years, became the supreme writer in the English language. Greenblatt explains this extraordinary phenomenon with comprehensive evidence, skillful argument, and gracefully supple style. Each chapter pursues myriad paper trails - historical accounts by many hands; religious, legal, and literary documents; official pronouncements; known Shakespearean sources; scraps of letters, reminiscences, and recorded gossip - anything that could shed light on his subject. The result is a well-ordered analysis that is fascinating and largely convincing. National Book Award nominee. (Oct. 19)

In 1921, four men and their Inuit guide, Ada Blackjack, ventured into the Arctic to claim a stretch of tundra for the British Empire. Only Ada survived this harrowing ordeal. (Jan. 6)

Gullette, a cultural scholar who calls herself an "age critic," challenges the belief that decline is the truth of aging. "We are aged more by culture than by chromosomes," she observes. (Jan. 13)

A welcome new podium for the Puritan woman who wouldn't hold her tongue, even under the threat of banishment. Marvelous analysis of her two trials. (March 30)

In this exhaustively researched and valuable account, Dubois looks back to the founding of Haiti. The revolution, he says, left "enduring scars" that included militarism, a tradition of dictatorship, and widespread economic hardship. (March 23)

Unionized coal miners and their employers in West Virginia during 1920-21 left a legacy that still bedevils labor-management relations today. A tense, illuminating history of the largest armed uprising since the Civil War. (June 15)

Told mostly through the perspectives of Kirk Bloodsworth and his various lawyers, this book explains everything that went wrong to place an innocent man on death row for a crime he knew nothing about. (Aug. 24)

This collection of Hersh's stories for The New Yorker, amplified and rearranged here, deals with questions that remain staples of news coverage today: Who's responsible for the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib? Did the US administration authorize torture? How did the intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction get so messed up? (Sept. 21)

A welcome reassessment of one of the most important and controversial leaders of the 20th century. (Jan. 6)

This insider's account of how IRS revenue officers deal with tardy and dishonest wage earners is reassuringly witty and humane. (March 2)

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