Robert A. Caro, Ben Fountain Among National Book Critics Circle Winners

The National Book Critics Circle handed out its annual awards on Thursday night at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium, with an old hand among the winners.

Martine Fougeron/Getty, for The New York Times Robert A. Caro

Robert A. Caro won in the biography category for the fourth volume in his epic life of Lyndon B. Johnson, “The Passage of Power.” The first two books in Mr. Caro’s series also won the Book Critics Circle award, and the third volume was a finalist. Michiko Kakutani wrote that in his latest book, Mr. Caro ses “the intimate knowledge of Johnson he’s acquired over 36 years to tell [the] story with consummate artistry and ardor.”

Only two of the winners were present to accept their awards. The general nonfiction award went to Andrew Solomon for “Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity,” which Dwight Garner called a “knotty, gargantuan and lionhearted” book. And Ben Fountain was in town from Dallas to pick up the fiction award for “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.” Janet Maslin wrote that the Dallas Cowboys game at the novel’s center is “an artfully detailed microcosm of America in general, and George W. Bush’s Texas in particular, during the Iraq war. Though it covers only a few hours, the book is a gripping, eloquent provocation.”

D. A. Powell won the poetry award for “Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys.” Marina Warner’s “Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights” took home the prize for criticism, and the author and illustrator Leanne Shapton’s memoir “Swimming Studies” won in the autobiography category.

The circle’s annual Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing was given to William Deresiewicz. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, the authors of “The Madwoman in the Attic,” among other influential books of feinist literary criticism, accepted the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award with speeches via video.