NEW YORK (AP) - Stories of rich and poor are common themes among Wednesday night's nominees for the National Book Awards.

NEW YORK (AP) - Colum McCann's "Let the Great World Spin," a novel about daring, luck and mortality in 1970s New York, won the fiction prize Wednesday night at the 60th annual National Book Awards.

NEW YORK (AP) - The 60th annual National Book Awards was a night to celebrate literature and to wonder about its future.

"New York: The Novel" (Doubleday, 864 pages, $30,) by Edward Rutherfurd: New York City wasn't born a grand metropolis and world financial center. In 1664, the year in which Rutherfurd begins his latest sweeping historical novel, New York is New Amsterdam, a modest Dutch trading post of about 1,500 residents on an island the Native Americans called Manna Hata.

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) - Jeepers creepers! Savannah's got a Johnny Mercer statue for tourists' peepers.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Academy Awards overseers have chosen an entertainment veteran to direct the next Oscar show.

NEW YORK (AP) - Janet Jackson says she recognized her brother Michael's drug problem, and tried to help him, but that he rebuffed those attempts to intervene.

NEW YORK (AP) - American painter Irving Kriesberg has died in New York City. He combined intense abstract colors with human and animal elements.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Terverius Black believes in hip-hop gospel so much he sold his first home to get the money needed to start his Christian-themed entertainment company.

NEW YORK (AP) - Karl Rove's memoir has a title, "Courage and Consequence," and a release date - March 9, 2010.