"Oh, Beautiful" Named to Kirkus Reviews' Best of 2011 Book List

Dec. 7, 2011 - PRLog -- Often called “the world’s toughest book critics,” Kirkus Reviews has named Oh, Beautiful: An American Family in the 20th Century to its Best of 2011 book list. The book titles making up the five categories of the list were announced this week.

Oh, Beautiful appears within the Best Indie of 2011 category, which encompasses all genres of independently published books. The titles named to the Best Indie of 2011 category are “books that caught our eye or blew our mind or touched our heart, some even earning Kirkus stars,” said Perry Crowe, the category’s editor.

Oh, Beautiful earned the Kirkus star, which is awarded to “books of remarkable merit,” this past September. Just 15 of the 50 titles named to the Best Indie of 2011 category also earned the Kirkus star.

The four other categories in the Best of 2011 list are best fiction, best nonfiction, best children’s books, and best teen books. Some of the better-known authors on the list whose books also received the Kirkus star are David Brooks, Joan Didion, Umberto Eco, Francis Fukuyama, Stephen King, and Haruki Murakami.

“That’s darn good company,” said John Paul Godges, the author of Oh, Beautiful. “It is a huge honor to have Oh, Beautiful placed among the works of such renowned writers. It is a very encouraging honor, for which I am truly grateful.”

To see the complete Best of 2011 list, visit http://www.kirkusreviews.com/best-of/2011/indie/

# # #

Oh, Beautiful: An American Family in the 20th Century is a courageous family memoir that explores what it means to be American.