2003 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winners & Finalists

The Robert Kirsch Award – Ishmael Reed

BIOGRAPHY

Winner: Neil Smith, American Empire: Roosevelt’s Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization (University of California Press)

Finalists:

	Deirdre Bair, Jung: A Biography (Little, Brown) T.J. Binyon, Pushkin: A Biography (Alfred A. Knopf) Robert Hughes, Goya (Alfred A. Knopf) Rebecca Solnit, River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (Viking)

CURRENT INTEREST

Winner: Ross Terrill, The New Chinese Empire -- And What It Means for the United States (Basic Books)

Finalists:

	Jon Krakauer, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith (Doubleday) Gerald Posner, Why America Slept: The Failure To Prevent 9/11 (Random House) Carlo Rotella, Cut Time: An Education at the Fights (Houghton Mifflin) Anthony Swofford, Jarhead: A Marine’s Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles (Scribner)

FICTION

Winner: Pete Dexter, Train: A Novel (Doubleday)

Finalists:

	Sherman Alexie, Ten Little Indians: Stories (Grove Press / Grove/Atlantic) Pete Dexter, Train: A Novel (Doubleday) Michelle Huneven, Jamesland (Alfred A. Knopf) Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake (Houghton Mifflin) Tobias Wolff, Old School: A Novel (Alfred A. Knopf)

FIRST FICTION (The Art Seidenbaum Award)

Winner: Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Doubleday)

Finalists:

	Monica Ali, Brick Lane: A Novel (Scribner) David Marshall Chan, Goblin Fruit: Stories (Context Books) John Murray, A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies: Stories (HarperCollins) Lara Vapnyar, There Are Jews in My House (Pantheon Books)

HISTORY

Winner: Henry Wiencek, An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Finalists:

	Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History (Doubleday) Louis Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization (Belknap Press / Harvard University Press) David Maraniss, They Marched into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967 (Simon & Schuster) Timothy Tackett, When the King Took Flight (Harvard University Press)

MYSTERY/THRILLER

Winner: George P. Pelecanos, Soul Circus: A Novel (Little, Brown)

Finalists:

	Neil Gordon, The Company You Keep (Viking) Peter Lovesey, The House Sitter (Soho Press) Henning Mankell, The Dogs of Riga: A Kurt Wallander Mystery [translated from the Swedish by Laurie Thompson] (The New Press) Rebecca Pawel, Death of a Nationalist (Soho Press)

POETRY

Winner: Anthony Hecht, Collected Later Poems (Alfred A. Knopf)

Finalists:

	Henri Cole, Middle Earth (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Charles Simic, The Voice at 3:00 A.M.: Selected Late & New Poems (Harcourt) Rosanna Warren, Departure: Poems (W.W. Norton & Company) Kevin Young, Jelly Roll: A Blues (Alfred A. Knopf)

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Winner: Philip J. Hilts, Protecting America’s Health: The FDA, Business, and One Hundred Years of Regulation (Alfred A. Knopf)

Finalists:

David Baron, The Beast in the Garden: A Modern Parable of Man and Nature (W.W. Norton & Company) Chandler Burr, The Emperor of Scent: A Story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses (Random House) Stephen S. Hall, Merchants of Immortality: Chasing the Dream of Human Life Extension (Houghton Mifflin) Paul Hoffman, Wings of Madness: Alberto Santos-Dumont and the Invention of Flight (Hyperion)

YOUNG ADULT FICTION

Winner: Jennifer Donnelly, A Northern Light (Harcourt Children’s Books)

Finalists:

	Martha Brooks, True Confessions of a Heartless Girl (Melanie Kroupa Books / Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers) Kevin Henkes, Olive’s Ocean (Greenwillow Books / HarperCollins Children’s Books) Richard Peck, The River Between Us (Dial Books for Young Readers / Penguin Young Readers Group) Francine Prose, After (Joanna Cotler Books / HarperCollins Children's Books)