With all the moaning and groaning about how illiterate Americans are, how no one reads anything serious because everyone's camped out in front of the TV watching Fear Factor it might be easy to miss the year's biggest story in books. Political books and serious nonfiction titles about terrorism and the economy are selling like hotcakes. And the critics have noticed. Guess what's a finalist for the National Book Award? That's right, it's the The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States-Authorized Edition (W.W. Norton & Company). Ok, even we'll admit it's a bit of a long, hard slog, but it is a very important book. Too bad the report was just a big whitewash.
