Biography
Current Interest
Fiction
Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
History
Mystery/Thriller
Poetry
Science & Technology
Young Adult Literature
2008 Robert Kirsch Award
2008 Book Prize Winners and Finalists
Biography
Winner:
Paula J. Giddings,
Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the
Campaign Against Lynching (Amistad/HarperCollins)
Runners Up:
H.W. Brands,
A Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Doubleday)
Ernest Freeberg,
Democracy's Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War,
and the Right to Dissent (Harvard University Press)
Jon Meacham,
American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House
(Random House)
Jackie Wullschlager,
Chagall: A Biography (Alfred A. Knopf)
Current Interest
Winner:
Barton Gellman,
Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency (Penguin Press)
Runners Up:
Steve Coll,
The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century
(The Penguin Press)
Dexter Filkins,
The Forever War (Knopf)
Jane Mayer,
The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror
Turned into a War on American Ideals (Doubleday)
Jill Bolte Taylor,
My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey (Viking)
Fiction
Winner:
Marilynne Robinson,
Home
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Runners Up:
Sebastian Barry,
The Secret Scripture (Viking)
Richard Price,
Lush Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Joan Silber,
The Size of the World (W. W. Norton)
Marisa Silver,
The God of War (Simon & Schuster)
Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
Winner:
Zoë Ferraris,
Finding Nouf
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Runners Up:
Uwem Akpan,
Say You're One of Them (Little, Brown and Co.)
Sadie Jones,
The Outcast (HarperCollins)
Roma Tearne,
Mosquito (Europa Editions)
David Wroblewski,
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (Ecco)
History
Winner:
Mark Mazower,
Hitler’s Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe (The Penguin Press)
Runners Up:
Michael Dobbs,
One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro
on the Brink of Nuclear War (Alfred A. Knopf)
Drew Gilpin Faust,
This Republic of Suffering: Death and the
American Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf)
Thomas J. Sugrue,
Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil
Rights in the North (Random House)
Rick Wartzman,
Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of
John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (PublicAffairs)
Mystery/Thriller
Winner:
Michael Koryta,
Envy the Night
(Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Minotaur)
Runners Up:
Colin Harrison,
The Finder (Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Simon Lewis,
Bad Traffic: An Inspector Jian Novel (Scribner)
Nina Revoyr,
The Age of Dreaming (Akashic Books)
Tom Rob Smith,
Child 44 (Grand Central Publishing)
Poetry
Winner:
Frank Bidart,
Watching the Spring Festival: Poems
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Runners Up:
Jorie Graham,
Sea Change: Poems (Ecco)
Marie Howe,
The Kingdom of Ordinary Time: Poems (W.W. Norton)
Cole Swensen,
Ours (University of California Press)
Connie Voisine,
Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream
(University of Chicago Press)
Science & Technology
Winner:
Leonard Susskind,
The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking
to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics (Little, Brown and Co.)
Runners Up:
Avery Gilbert,
What the Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life
(Crown Publishing)
Kenneth R. Miller,
Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul
(Viking)
Martin J.S. Rudwick,
Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of
Geohistory in the Age of Reform (University of Chicago Press)
Carl Zimmer,
Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life (Pantheon)
Young Adult Literature
Winner:
Terry Pratchett,
Nation (HarperCollins)
Runners Up:
Candace Fleming,
The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary
(Schwartz & Wade/Random House Children’s Books)
Neil Gaiman,
The Graveyard Book (HarperCollins)
Oscar Hijuelos,
Dark Dude (Atheneum/Simon & Schuster)
Nate Powell,
Swallow Me Whole (Top Shelf Productions)