1990 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes Announced

A biography that portrays Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a “consummate actor” and an examination of how technology has affected human values were among six books named today as winners of the 1990 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes.

At a reception for publishers in New York, Times Book Editor Jack Miles announced that Geoffrey C. Ward, author of “A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt,” had won the biography award and O. B. Hardison Jr., author of “Disappearing Through the Skylight: Culture and Technology in the Twentieth Century,” was being honored posthumously as the recipient of the current-interest prize. Each prize carries a $1,000 cash award and a copy of the winning book hand-bound in leather.

Irish novelist Edna O’Brien won the fiction award for “Lantern Slides,” a collection of short stories exploring themes of loneliness and loss set in Ireland, Italy and London, where the author has lived for the past two decades.

Winner of the history prize was Richard Fletcher, author of “The Quest for El Cid,” a study of Rodrigo Diaz, the 11th-Century aristocrat-warrior who became Spain’s first national hero.

In the category of science and technology, Jane S. Smith was honored for “Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine,” a social history of the epidemic that traumatized American parents in the 1950s and the scientific discovery that ended their terror.

John Caddy received the poetry prize for “The Color of Mesabi Bones,” a collection of autobiographical poems that describe his suffering at the hands of an abusive father.

Winning authors will be honored at a reception at The Times building Nov. 2 when the winner of the Robert Kirsch Award will be announced. That award, named for The Times’ late book critic, recognizes an author who has lived in the West or made it the focus of his or her work.

“A First-Class Temperament” is the second volume of Ward’s psychologically illuminating biography of Roosevelt. Beginning with Roosevelt’s marriage in 1905, the author tracks him through his fledgling legal career to his election as governor and argues that the future President’s acting skills enabled him to cope with the devastation of infantile paralysis.

Ward, who is a former editor of Audience and American Heritage magazines, is co-author of “The Civil War,” the documentary series to be aired on PBS next week.

Hardison, who died of cancer Aug. 5 at age 61, was a professor of English at Georgetown University who wrote many books on cultural criticism. In his last book, he traced this century’s major technological developments and looked at how they had fundamentally altered basic concepts of nature, history, language, art and human evolution.

The Times has awarded book prizes since 1980. Winners are selected by six committees of three judges each. None of the judges are Times employees.