Although there was no end to teeth-gnashing in 2007 about the state of reading and book reviewing in America, it was a very good year for books.

In fact, it was a workout to winnow this wonderful bumper crop into a manageable list, so what I have done is shuffled titles around to produce a mix of fiction and nonfiction, 20 books in all.

The first 10 are equal in merit, while the remaining would grace anybody's bookshelf.

Best of the best

"Legacy of Ashes" by Tim Weiner won the National Book Award for best nonfiction, well-deserved for its wide range of on-the-record sources relating the troubled history of the Central Intelligence Agency.

"The Slave Ship" by Marcus Rediker is a serious work of scholarship with an emotional wallop -- the fact that violence was an essential tool in making the commerce of human beings successful. Rediker is on the history faculty at the University of Pittsburgh.

"Tree of Smoke" by Denis Johnson earned the National Book Award for best fiction, a brave choice because this long and tortured novel of Vietnam demands your full attention.

"Ralph Ellison" by Arnold Rampersad brings the troubled creator of "Invisible Man" into focus for the first time.

"Helen Clay Frick: Bittersweet Heiress" by Martha Frick Symington Sanger adds much-appreciated understanding to the doting daughter of Pittsburgh's most enigmatic -- and despised -- steel magnate.

"Divisadero" by Michael Ondaatje is another difficult yet rewarding novel by a master prose stylist.

"Run" by Ann Patchett enhances the reputation of this clever and careful plotter of novels, recognized for "Bel Canto."

"Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World" by Margaret MacMillan rolls back the history pages to Nixon's greatest triumph, months before his slide into ignominy.

"Falling Man" by Don DeLillo might be the most quirky of the emerging spate of "Sept. 11" novels, but it captures both the numbness and the despair of the event with a sharpness only DeLillo can deliver.

"Schulz and Peanuts" by David Michaelis uses the full range of the biography to describe Charles Schulz and his creations through the decades of their fame.

Simply best

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" by J.K. Rowling sends the world's most famous boy wizard gracefully into retirement and preserves Rowling's fame as a major storyteller.

"The Secret History of the War on Cancer" by Devra Davis is the disturbing report of years of research by this scientist at Pitt as it indicts several professions for steering that campaign in wrong directions.

"Spook Country" by William Gibson slyly captures the nation's growing paranoia with digital intrusions into our private lives as only a novelist can.

"Shadow Catcher" by Marianne Wiggins is a fictional exploration of real lives -- famed photographer Edward Curtis and a novelist named Marianne Wiggins with powerful results.

"The Savage Detectives" by Roberto Bolano introduces American readers to this talented South American novelist who died in 2003.

"The Day of Battle" by Rick Atkinson continues the Pulitzer winner's history of the Allies' campaign from North Africa into Italy in World War with the same drama he brought to "An Army at Dawn."

"American Creation" by Joseph Ellis charts the highlights and low lights of the Founding Fathers' early efforts to make a more perfect union in effective fashion.

"Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature" by Linda Lear restores the children's author/illustrator to her rightful place as an early environmentalist, a theme Lear first explored in her Rachel Carson bio.

"The Nine" by Jeffrey Toobin pries open the tightly sealed doors of the U.S. Supreme Court, now refashioned in the George W. Bush mode, with a journalist's practiced eye.

"The Coldest Winter" by David Halberstam was published posthumously, a fitting end to a long, distinguished career. Here, Halberstam examines the brutal Korean War.