2004 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalists

ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD: Tony Hillerman

BIOGRAPHY

Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (Penguin Press) Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (W.W. Norton & Company) Richard Rhodes, John James Audubon: The Making of an American (Alfred A. Knopf) Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, de Kooning: An American Master (Alfred A. Knopf) Michael J. Ybarra, Washington Gone Crazy: Senator Pat McCarran and the Great American Communist Hunt (Steerforth Press)

CURRENT INTEREST

Karen Armstrong, The Spiral Staircase: My Climb out of Darkness (Alfred A. Knopf) Edward Conlon, Blue Blood (Riverhead Books) Michael Dirda, Bound to Please: An Extraordinary One-Volume Literary Education -- Essays on Great Writers and Their Books (W.W. Norton & Company) Ann Patchett, Truth & Beauty: A Friendship (HarperCollins) Evan Wright, Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America and the New Face of American War (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)

FICTION

	Chris Abani, GraceLand (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Russell Banks, The Darling (HarperCollins) Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Colm Tóibín, The Master: A Novel (Scribner) Joy Williams, Honored Guest: Stories (Alfred A. Knopf)

FIRST FICTION (ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION)

	Lorraine Adams, Harbor (Alfred A. Knopf) David Bezmozgis, Natasha and Other Stories (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Pete Duval, Rear View: Stories (Mariner Books / Houghton Mifflin) Susan Fletcher, Eve Green (W.W. Norton & Company) Lisa Glatt, A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That (Simon & Schuster)

HISTORY

Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (Penguin Press) Max Frankel, High Noon in the Cold War: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Cuban Missile Crisis (Presidio Press / Ballantine Books) Geoffrey R. Stone, Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism (W.W. Norton & Company) Richard Steven Street, Beasts of the Field: A Narrative History of California Farmworkers, 1769-1913 (Stanford University Press) Alfred F. Young, Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier (Alfred A. Knopf)

MYSTERY/THRILLER

	Alan Furst, Dark Voyage: A Novel (Random House) Henning Mankell, The Return of the Dancing Master [translated from the Swedish by Laurie Thompson] (The New Press) Charles McCarry, Old Boys (Overlook Press) Kem Nunn, Tijuana Straits: A Novel (Scribner) Ian Rankin, A Question of Blood: An Inspector Rebus Novel (Little, Brown)

POETRY

	Richard Howard, Inner Voices: Selected Poems, 1963-2003 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Brigit Pegeen Kelly, The Orchard (BOA Editions, Ltd.) Joshua Mehigan, The Optimist: Poems (Ohio University Press) Spencer Reece, The Clerk’s Tale: Poems (Mariner Books / Houghton Mifflin) Catherine Tufariello, Keeping My Name (Texas Tech University Press)

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Ann B. Parson, The Proteus Effect: Stem Cells and Their Promise for Medicine (Joseph Henry Press / National Academies Press) Lauren Slater, Opening Skinner’s Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century (W.W. Norton & Company) Alan Tennant, On the Wing: To the Edge of the Earth with the Peregrine Falcon (Alfred A. Knopf) Jonathan Weiner, His Brother’s Keeper: A Story from the Edge of Medicine (Ecco / HarperCollins) Charles Wohlforth, The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate Change (North Point Press / Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

YOUNG ADULT FICTION

	Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood (Cinco Puntos Press) Melvin Burgess, Doing It (Henry Holt Books for Young Readers) Michael Morpurgo, Private Peaceful (Scholastic Press) Adam Rapp, Under the Wolf, Under the Dog (Candlewick Press) Meg Rosoff, How I Live Now (Wendy Lamb Books / Random House Children’s Books)