Times Book Prizes Finalists Announced

The finalists for the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were announced Friday. Now in their 22nd year, the prizes acknowledge excellence in nine categories of writing, ranging from fiction and young adult fiction to science and technology and mysteries-thrillers.

Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalists were selected by eight three-member committees. Each category is judged by three notable writers from the genre, and this year’s judges included Eric Lax for biography and Judith Freeman for fiction.

The winners, as well as the recipient of the Robert Kirsch Award (which honors the body of work of a writer living in and/or writing about the American West), will be named in a public ceremony at UCLA’s Royce Hall on April 27 at 7:30 p.m.

The ceremony, which will be emceed by prize-winning author, KCRW-FM commentator and Public Radio International contributor Sandra Tsing Loh, is part of the sixth annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, which will be held April 27 and 28 at UCLA.

The finalists are:

Biography: “Marie Antoinette: The Journey” by Antonia Fraser (Nan A. Talese Books); “Seabiscuit: An American Legend” by Laura Hillenbrand (Random House); “John Adams” by David McCullough (Simon & Schuster); “Theodore Rex” by Edmund Morris (Random House); “Boswell’s Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson” by Adam Sisman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

Current Interest: “States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering” by Stanley Cohen (Polity); “The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued” by Ann Crittenden (Metropolitan Books); “The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment That Redefined the Supreme Court” by John W. Dean (The Free Press); “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America” by Barbara Ehrenreich (Metropolitan Books); “Tom and Huck Don’t Live Here Anymore: Childhood and Murder in the Heart of America” by Ron Powers (St. Martin’s Press).

Fiction: “The Corrections: A Novel” by Jonathan Franzen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux); “By the Sea” by Abdulrazak Gurnah (The New Press); “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories” by Alice Munro (Alfred A. Knopf); “Why Did I Ever: A Novel” by Mary Robison (Counterpoint Press); “John Henry Days: A Novel” by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday Books).

Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction: “My Dream of You” by Nuala O’Faolain (Riverhead Books); “Crawling at Night: A Novel” by Nani Power (Atlantic Monthly Press); “The Dark Room (a novel)” by Rachel Seiffert (Pantheon Books); “The Death of Vishnu: A Novel” by Manil Suri (W.W. Norton); “The Right Hand of Sleep: A Novel” by John Wray (Alfred A. Knopf).

History: “The Stranger From Paradise: A Biography of William Blake” by G.E. Bentley Jr. (Yale University Press); “France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944” by Julian Jackson (Oxford University Press); “The Metaphysical Club” by Louis Menand (Farrar, Straus and Giroux); “Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus” by Rick Perlstein (Hill & Wang); “Venice, Lion City: The Religion of Empire” by Garry Wills (Simon & Schuster).

Mystery/Thriller: “Open Season: A Joe Pickett Novel” by C.J. Box (G.P. Putnam’s Sons); “Little America: A Novel” by Henry Bromell (Alfred A. Knopf); “The Wooden Leg of Inspector Anders” by Marshall Browne (Thomas Dunne Books); “Chasing the Devil’s Tail: A Storyville Mystery” by David Fulmer (Poisoned Pen Press); “Silent Joe: A Novel” by T. Jefferson Parker (Hyperion).

Poetry: “The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos” by Anne Carson (Alfred A. Knopf); “Felt: Poems” by Alice Fulton (W.W. Norton); “The Seven Ages” by Louise Gluck (Ecco); “Landscape With Chainsaw: Poems” by James Lasdun (W.W. Norton); “Song of the World Becoming: New and Collected Poems, 1981-2001” by Pattiann Rogers (Milkweed Editions).

Science and Technology: “In Code: A Mathematical Journey” by Sarah Flannery with David Flannery (Workman Publishing Company); “The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies” by Richard Hamblyn (Farrar, Straus and Giroux); “A Different Nature: The Paradoxical World of Zoos and Their Uncertain Future” by David Hancocks (University of California Press); “Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood” by Oliver Sacks (Alfred A. Knopf); “The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry” by Bryan Sykes (W.W. Norton).

Young Adult Fiction: “The Seeing Stone” by Kevin Crossley-Holland (Arthur A. Levine Books); “Damage” by A.M. Jenkins (HarperCollins Children’s Books); “Girlhearts” by Norma Fox Mazer (HarperCollins Children’s Books); “The Other Side of Truth” by Beverley Naidoo, (HarperCollins Children’s Books); “The Land” by Mildred D. Taylor (Phyllis Fogelman Books).

The Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were established in 1980.