Los Angeles Times Book Prizes History And Awards

Since 1980, the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes have been dedicated to discovering new voices and celebrating the highest quality of writing across the spectrum of book publishing.

History

UPDATED May 4, 2026 | 11:32 AM

2025

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ACHIEVEMENT IN AUDIOBOOK PRODUCTION
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Presented by Audible

The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Achievement in Audiobook Production is given in collaboration with Audible. Established in 2023, the prize focuses on performance, production and innovation in storytelling, and recognizes a person or an ensemble cast.

Winner: The Correspondent: A Novel, Maggi-Meg Reed, Jane Oppenheimer, Carly Robins, Jeff Ebner, David Pittu, Chris Andrew Ciulla, Mark Bramhall, Petrea Burchard, Robert Petkoff, Kimberly Farr, Cerris Morgan-Moyer, Peter Ganim, Jade Wheeler, Steve West, and Jim Seybert (Narrators), Kelly Gildea (Producer), Random House Audio

Finalists:

How to Lose Your Mother, Molly Jong-Fast (Narrator), Matie Argiropoulos (Producer), Penguin Audio
People Like Us: A Novel, Jason Mott, Ronald Peet, and JD Jackson (Narrators), Diane McKiernan (Producer), Penguin Audio
The Emperor of Gladness: A Novel, James Aaron Oh (Narrator), Linda Korn (Producer), Penguin Audio
Black in Blues, Imani Perry (Narrator), Suzanne Mitchell (Producer), Ecco

Judges: Kerry Donahue, Diana Wagman, Ronald Young Jr.

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ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
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Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: Ibis: A Novel, Justin Haynes, Harry N. Abrams

Finalists:

Plum, Andy Anderegg, Hub City Press
Idle Grounds: A Novel, Krystelle Bamford, Scribner
Dominion: A Novel, Addie E. Citchens, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Hunchback: A Novel, Saou Ichikawa translated by Polly Barton, Hogarth

Judges: Natashia Deón, Scott O’Connor, Amy Wallen

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BIOGRAPHY
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Winner: The Strangers: Five Extraordinary Black Men and the Worlds That Made Them, Ekow Eshun, Harper

Finalists:

Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance, Joe Dunthorne, Scribner
The Many Lives of Anne Frank, Ruth Franklin, Yale University Press
Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America, Beth Macy, Penguin Press
Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution, Amanda Vaill, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Judges: Leah Redmond Chang, Thomas Curwen, Diane Smith

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CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD PRIZE
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Sponsored By: Christopher Isherwood Foundation

This award encompasses fiction, travel writing, memoir and diary and honors exceptional work.

Winner: Playworld: A Novel, Adam Ross, Alfred A. Knopf

Judges: Dinah Lenney, Deesha Philyaw, Rick Whitaker

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CURRENT INTEREST
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Winner: There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America, Brian Goldstone, Crown

Finalists:

A Greek Tragedy: One Day, a Deadly Shipwreck, and the Human Cost of the Refugee Crisis, Jeanne Carstensen, One Signal Publishers
Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary, Stefan Fatsis, Atlantic Monthly Press
No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson, Gardiner Harris, Random House
When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World, Jordan Thomas, Riverhead Books

Judges: Susan Brenneman, Frances Dinkelspiel, Miriam Pawel

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FICTION
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Winner: Palaver: A Novel, Bryan Washington, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalist:

Only Way Out: A Novel, Tod Goldberg, Thomas & Mercer
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Stephen Graham Jones, Saga Press
These Heathens: A Novel, Mia McKenzie, Random House
Gloria: A Novel, Andrés Felipe Solano translated by Will Vanderhyden, Counterpoint Press

Judges: Natashia Deón, Scott O’Connor, Amy Wallen

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GRAPHIC NOVEL/COMICS
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Winner: Life Drawing: A Love and Rockets Collection, Jaime Hernandez, Fantagraphics

Finalists:

Black Cohosh, Eagle Valiant Brosi, Drawn & Quarterly
Milk White Steed, Michael D. Kennedy, Drawn & Quarterly
Cannon, Lee Lai, Drawn & Quarterly
The Ephemerata: Shaping the Exquisite Nature of Grief, Carol Tyler, Fantagraphics

Judges: Andrew Neal, Audra Stang, Angie Wang

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HISTORY
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Winner: Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City, Bench Ansfield, W. W. Norton & Company

Finalists:

Black-Owned: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore, Char Adams, Tiny Reparations Books
Titans of Industrial Agriculture: How a Few Giant Corporations Came to Dominate the Farm Sector and Why It Matters, Jennifer Clapp, The MIT Press
Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850-1950, Eli Erlick, Beacon Press
High School Students Unite!: Teen Activism, Education Reform, and FBI Surveillance in Postwar America, Aaron G. Fountain Jr., University of North Carolina Press

Judges: Andrew Aydin, Anna-Lisa Cox, Andrea Freeman

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INNOVATOR’S AWARD
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The Innovator’s Award (added in 2009) recognizes the people and institutions that are doing cutting edge work to bring books, publishing and storytelling into the future, whether in terms of new business models, new technologies or new applications of narrative art.

Winner: We Need Diverse Books

The 2025 Innovator’s Award winner is We Need Diverse Books (WNDB), a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing diversity and inclusion in publishing. What began in 2014 as a trending hashtag on social media, has expanded into organized mentorships, workshops, grants and professional development programs. WNDB supports writers, illustrators and publishing professionals to ensure better representation on the bookshelves, and also works closely with educators and libraries to drive systemic change across the publishing ecosystem. This work continues to foster a more equitable literary landscape for all readers.

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MYSTERY/THRILLER
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Winner: El Dorado Drive, Megan Abbott, G.P. Putnam’s Sons

Finalist:

Everybody Wants to Rule the World: A Novel, Ace Atkins, William Morrow
Crooks: A Novel About Crime and Family, Lou Berney, William Morrow
The Proving Ground: A Lincoln Lawyer Novel, Michael Connelly, Little, Brown and Company
King of Ashes: A Novel, S.A. Cosby, Flatiron Books: Pine & Cedar

Judges: Colette Bancroft, Oline Cogdill, Alex Segura

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POETRY
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Winner: A Magnificent Loneliness, Allison Benis White, Four Way Books

Finalist:

The New Economy, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Copper Canyon Press
Blue Opening: Poems, Chet’la Sebree, Tin House
I Do Know Some Things, Richard Siken, Copper Canyon Press
Lazarus Species: Poems, Devon Walker-Figueroa, Milkweed Editions

Judges: Remica Bingham-Risher, John Evans, Airea D. Matthews

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ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
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The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Amy Tan

Acclaimed author Amy Tan is 2025’s Robert Kirsch Award winner which recognizes a writer with a substantial connection to the American West. Her expansive work, including “The Joy Luck Club,” “The Kitchen God’s Wife” and “The Bonesetter’s Daughter,” explores the immigrant experience and family bonds. Born in Oakland to immigrant parents, Tan gives voice to the Chinese American experience and the American story. In “The Backyard Bird Chronicles,” she turns her observational eye to nature, chronicling her foray into birding through daily entries and sketches. Her accolades, including the National Humanities Medal and the 2026 Preston Award, solidify her legacy as a titan of literary excellence and cultural impact.

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SCI-FI, FANTASY & SPECULATIVE FICTION
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Winner: Luminous: A Novel, Silvia Park, Simon & Schuster

Finalists:

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Stephen Graham Jones, Saga Press
The Death of Mountains, Jordan Kurella, Lethe Press
Death of the Author: A Novel, Nnedi Okorafor, William Morrow
Esperance, Adam Oyebanji, DAW Books

Judges: Maurice Broaddus, S. B. Divya, Maryelizabeth Yturralde

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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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Winner: Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI, Karen Hao, Penguin Press

Finalists:

They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals, Mariah Blake, Crown
The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything: How Carbon Dioxide Made Our World, Peter Brannen, Ecco
Strata: Stories from Deep Time, Laura Poppick, W. W. Norton & Company
When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World, Jordan Thomas, Riverhead Books

Judges: Jia Rui Cook, Kate Gammon, Stephen R. Sparks

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YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
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Winner: Angelica and the Bear Prince, Trung Le Nguyen, Random House Graphic

Finalists:

The Corruption of Hollis Brown, K. Ancrum, HarperCollins
King of the Neuro Verse, Idris Goodwin, Atheneum Books for Young Readers
My Mother, the Mermaid Chaser, Jamie Jo Hoang, Crown Books for Young Readers
Truth Is: A Novel in Verse, Hannah V. Sawyerr, Amulet Books

Judges: Aracely Menendez, Guia Serrano, Julia Torres

2024

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ACHIEVEMENT IN AUDIOBOOK PRODUCTION
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Presented by Audible

The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Achievement in Audiobook Production is given in collaboration with Audible. Established in 2023, the prize focuses on performance, production and innovation in storytelling, and recognizes a person or an ensemble cast.

Winner: James: A Novel, Dominic Hoffman (Narrator), Linda Korn (Producer), Random House Audio

Finalists:

Giovanni’s Room: A Novel, Matt Bomer (Narrator), Kelly Gildea (Director, Co-Producer), Lauren Klein (Producer), Random House Audio
New Nigeria County, Clare Brown (Narrator), Allison Light (Producer), Simon & Schuster Audio Originals
George Orwell’s 1984: An Audible Original adaptation, Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo and an Ensemble Cast (Narrators), Producer (Audible), Audible Original
Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity, Michele Norris With A Full Cast (Narrators), Mike Noble (Producer), Simon & Schuster Audio

Judges: Andy Bowers, Kerry Donahue, Diana Wagman

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ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
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Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: Cinema Love: A Novel, Jiaming Tang, Dutton

Finalists:

Ghostroots: Stories, Pemi Aguda, W. W. Norton & Company
Olive Days: A Novel, Jessica Elisheva Emerson, Counterpoint Press
God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer: A Novel, Joseph Earl Thomas, Grand Central Publishing
What We Tried to Bury Grows Here, Julian Zabalbeascoa, Two Dollar Radio

Judges: Natashia Deón, Scott O’Connor, Amy Wallen

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BIOGRAPHY
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Winner: Orwell’s Ghosts: Wisdom and Warnings for the Twenty-First Century, Laura Beers, W. W. Norton & Company

Finalists:

Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar, Cynthia Carr, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
We Were Illegal: Uncovering a Texas Family’s Mythmaking and Migration, Jessica Goudeau, Viking
Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Dragon from Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany, Pamela D. Toler, Beacon Press

Judges: Margaret A. Burnham, Leah Redmond Chang, Diane Smith

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CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD PRIZE
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Sponsored By: Christopher Isherwood Foundation

The Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose encompasses fiction, travel writing, memoir and diary and honors exceptional work.

Winner: Health and Safety: A Breakdown, Emily Witt, Pantheon

Judges: Dinah Lenney, Adriana Ramirez, Rick Whitaker

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CURRENT INTEREST
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Winner: The Rent Collectors: Exploitation, Murder, and Redemption in Immigrant LA, Jesse Katz, Astra House

Finalists:

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis, Jonathan Blitzer, Penguin Press
The Message, Ta-Nehisi Coates, One World
The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Scribner
The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi, Wright Thompson, Penguin Press

Judges: Andrew Aydin, Celeste Fremon, Miriam Pawel

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FICTION
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Winner: Say Hello to My Little Friend: A Novel, Jennine Capó Crucet, Simon & Schuster

Finalists:

Headshot: A Novel, Rita Bullwinkel, Viking
James: A Novel, Percival Everett, Doubleday
Season of the Swamp: A Novel, Yuri Herrera translated by Lisa Dillman, Graywolf Press
All Fours: A Novel, Miranda July, Riverhead Books

Judges: Natashia Deón, Scott O’Connor, Amy Wallen

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GRAPHIC NOVEL/COMICS
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Winner: Tokyo These Days, Vol. 1, Taiyō Matsumoto, VIZ Media

Finalists:

Hobtown Mystery Stories Vol. 2: The Cursed Hermit, Kris Bertin, Alexander Forbes, Oni Press
Cutting Season, Bhanu Pratap, Fantagraphics
Petar & Liza, Miroslav Sekulic-Struja translated by Jenna Allen, Fantagraphics
Rare Flavours, Ram V, Filipe Andrade, BOOM! Studios

Judges: Andrew Neal, Nero Villagallos O’Reilly, Zach Hazard Vaupen

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HISTORY
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Winner: Ruin Their Crops on the Ground: The Politics of Food in the United States, from the Trail of Tears to School Lunch, Andrea Freeman, Metropolitan Books

Finalists:

The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America, Andrew W. Kahrl, The University of Chicago Press
The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America, Aaron Robertson, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Cold War Country: How Nashville’s Music Row and the Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism, Joseph M. Thompson, The University of North Carolina Press
The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports, Michael Waters, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Judges: Anna-Lisa Cox, Martha S. Jones, Alaina E. Roberts

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INNOVATOR’S AWARD
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The Innovator’s Award (added in 2009) recognizes the people and institutions that are doing cutting edge work to bring books, publishing and storytelling into the future, whether in terms of new business models, new technologies or new applications of narrative art.

Winner: Amanda Gorman

The 2024 Innovator’s Award winner is Amanda Gorman, the award-winning writer and activist, and the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history. Gorman has used her platform to raise awareness on a host of issues from climate change and social justice to literacy. She speaks out against book bans and highlights the importance of representation and education. Her organization One Pen One Page promotes literacy through free creative writing programs for underserved youth. Her latest picture book, “Girls on the Rise,” celebrates the power of girls and highlights how girls have shaped history and why they should march boldly into the future.

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MYSTERY/THRILLER
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Winner: The Puzzle Box: A Novel, Danielle Trussoni, Random House

Finalists:

Havoc: A Novel, Christopher Bollen, Harper
The Waiting: A Ballard and Bosch Novel, Michael Connelly, Little Brown and Company
Guide Me Home (A Highway 59 Novel), Attica Locke, Mulholland Books
The God of the Woods: A Novel, Liz Moore, Riverhead Books

Judges: Oline Cogdill, Ivy Pochoda, Paula L. Woods

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POETRY
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Winner: Room Swept Home, Remica Bingham-Risher, Wesleyan University Press

Finalists:

The Sorrow Apartments, Andrea Cohen, Four Way Books
Ward Toward, Cindy Juyoung Ok, Yale University Press
Inner Verses, Pam Rehm, Wave Books
Black Bell, Alison C. Rollins, Copper Canyon Press

Judges: John Evans, Airea D. Matthews, Courtney Faye Taylor

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ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
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The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Pico Iyer

Award-winning writer Pico Iyer is 2024’s Robert Kirsch Award winner which recognizes a writer with a substantial connection to the American West. Iyer is the author of more than a dozen books on subjects ranging from the Dalai Lama to globalism. His recent memoir, “Aflame: Learning from Silence,” explores the power of calm and helps readers find deeper peace of mind. His acclaimed work also includes “The Half Known Life,” “Video Night in Kathmandu,” “The Lady and the Monk,” “The Global Soul,” “The Open Road” and “The Art of Stillness.” He contributes regularly to countless publications and has received numerous accolades throughout his career.

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SCI-FI, FANTASY & SPECULATIVE FICTION
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Winner: The Book of Love: A Novel, Kelly Link, Random House

Finalists:

The Naming Song, Jedediah Berry, Tor Books
The Bright Sword: A Novel of King Arthur, Lev Grossman, Viking
Absolution: A Southern Reach Novel, Jeff VanderMeer, MCD
The City in Glass, Nghi Vo, Tordotcom

Judges: Maurice Broaddus, Craig Laurance Gidney, Lucy A. Snyder

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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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Winner: Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are, Rebecca Boyle, Random House

Finalists:

Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life, Ferris Jabr, Random House
Twelve Trees: The Deep Roots of Our Future, Daniel Lewis, Avid Reader Press
Math in Drag, Kyne Santos, Johns Hopkins University Press
The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth, Zoë Schlanger, Harper

Judges: Shraddha Chakradhar, Leila Philip, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

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YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
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Winner: The Color of a Lie, Kim Johnson, Random House Books for Young Readers

Finalists:

Kindling, Traci Chee, Clarion Books
Looking for Smoke, K.A. Cobell, Heartdrum
Bright Red Fruit, Safia Elhillo, MAKE ME A WORLD
Shut Up, This Is Serious, Carolina Ixta, Quill Tree Books

Judges: Sharon Levin, Renee Roberson Tecco, Julia E. Torres

2023

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ACHIEVEMENT IN AUDIOBOOK PRODUCTION
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Presented by Audible

The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Achievement in Audiobook Production is given in collaboration with Audible. Established in 2023, the prize focuses on performance, production and innovation in storytelling, and recognizes a person or an ensemble cast.

Winner: Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin): A Memoir, Dion Graham (Narrator), Elishia Merricks (Producer), Macmillan Audio

Finalists:

Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere, Maria Bamford (Narrator), Michael Noble (Producer), Simon & Schuster Audio
Wild and Precious: A Celebration of Mary Oliver, Sophia Bush (Narrator), Helena de Groot (Lead Producer), Kerri Kolen (Exec. Producer), Pushkin Industries
Yellowface, Helen Laser (Narrator), Suzanne Mitchell (Casting Director & Executive Producer), HarperAudio
All the Sinners Bleed: A Novel, Adam Lazarre-White (Narrator), Elishia Merricks (Producer), Macmillan Audio

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ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
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Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: Company: Stories, Shannon Sanders, Graywolf Press

Finalists:

The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa: A Novel, Stephen Buoro, Bloomsbury Publishing
I’m a Fan: A Novel, Sheena Patel, Graywolf Press
Idlewild: A Novel, James Frankie Thomas, The Overlook Press
Dearborn, Ghassan Zeineddine, Tin House Books

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BIOGRAPHY
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Winner: The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman’s Narrative, Gregg Hecimovich, Ecco/HarperCollins

Finalists:

Young Queens: Three Renaissance Women and the Price of Power, Leah Redmond Chang, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage, Jonny Steinberg, Alfred A. Knopf
Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South, Elizabeth R. Varon, Simon & Schuster
The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet’s Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence, David Waldstreicher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD PRIZE
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Sponsored By: Christopher Isherwood Foundation

The Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose encompasses fiction, travel writing, memoir and diary and honors exceptional work.

Winner: Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, Claire Dederer, Alfred A. Knopf

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CURRENT INTEREST
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Winner: We Were Once A Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America, Roxanna Asgarian, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalists:

Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal, Bettina L. Love, St. Martin’s Press
American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15, Cameron McWhirter, Zusha Elinson, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Ordinary Notes, Christina Sharpe, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir, Raja Shehadeh, Other Press

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FICTION
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Winner: Same Bed Different Dreams, Ed Park, Random House

Finalists:

Loved and Missed, Susie Boyt, New York Review Books
Wednesday’s Child: Stories, Yiyun Li, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Dog of the North: A Novel, Elizabeth McKenzie, Penguin Press
Blackouts: A Novel, Justin Torres, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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GRAPHIC NOVEL/COMICS
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Winner: A Guest in the House, Emily Carroll, First Second

Finalists:

Cartoonshow, Derek M. Ballard, Oni Press
Blood of the Virgin, Sammy Harkham, Pantheon
Social Fiction, Chantal Montellier translated by Geoffrey Brock, New York Review Comics
CODA, Simon Spurrier, Matías Bergara (Illustrator), BOOM! Studios

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HISTORY
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Winner: Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century, Joya Chatterji, Yale University Press

Finalists:

The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History, Ned Blackhawk, Yale University Press
Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, Malcolm Harris, Little, Brown and Company
Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class, Blair LM Kelley, Liveright
Brooding over Bloody Revenge: Enslaved Women’s Lethal Resistance, Nikki M. Taylor, Cambridge University Press

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INNOVATOR’S AWARD
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The Innovator’s Award (added in 2009) recognizes the people and institutions that are doing cutting edge work to bring books, publishing and storytelling into the future, whether in terms of new business models, new technologies or new applications of narrative art.

Winner: Access Books

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MYSTERY/THRILLER
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Winner: Sing Her Down: A Novel, Ivy Pochoda, MCD

Finalists:

Dark Ride: A Thriller, Lou Berney, William Morrow
All the Sinners Bleed: A Novel, S. A. Cosby, Flatiron Books
Everybody Knows: A Novel, Jordan Harper, Mulholland Books
Time’s Undoing: A Novel, Cheryl A. Head, Dutton

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POETRY
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Winner: Bread and Circus: Poems, Airea D. Matthews, Scribner

Finalists:

Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco, K. Iver, Milkweed Editions
Couplets: A Love Story, Maggie Millner, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
The Court of No Record: Poems, Jenny Molberg, Louisiana State University Press
Master: Poems, Simon Shieh, Sarabande Books

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ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
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The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Jane Smiley

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SCI-FI, FANTASY & SPECULATIVE FICTION
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Winner: The Reformatory: A Novel, Tananarive Due, Saga Press

Finalists:

Whalefall, Daniel Kraus, MTV Books
Lone Women: A Novel, Victor LaValle, One World
The Fragile Threads of Power, V. E. Schwab, Tor Books
Jewel Box: Stories, E. Lily Yu, Erewhon Books

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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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Winner: Is Math Real? How Simple Questions Lead Us to Mathematics’ Deepest Truths, Eugenia Cheng, Basic Books

Finalists:

The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet, Jeff Goodell, Little, Brown and Company
The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos, Jaime Green, Hanover Square Press
A Book of Noises: Notes on the Auraculous, Caspar Henderson, The University of Chicago Press
A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?, Kelly Weinersmith, Zach Weinersmith, Penguin Press

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YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
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Winner: Gone Wolf, Amber McBride, Feiwel & Friends

Finalists:

Forgive Me Not, Jennifer Baker, Nancy Paulsen Books
Dear Medusa, Olivia A. Cole, Labyrinth Road
Invisible Son, Kim Johnson, Random House Books for Young Readers
Monstrous: A Transracial Adoption Story, Sarah Myer, First Second

2022

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
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Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: The Return of Faraz Ali: A Novel, Aamina Ahmad, Riverhead Books

Finalists:

Love, Maayan Eitan, Penguin Press
Stories From the Tenants Downstairs, Sidik Fofana, Scribner
Calling for a Blanket Dance, Oscar Hokeah, Algonquin Books
Manywhere: Stories, Morgan Thomas, MCD

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BIOGRAPHY
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Winner: G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century, Beverly Gage, Viking

Finalists:

Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality, Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Pantheon
Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century, Jennifer Homans, Random House
Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe, David Maraniss, Simon & Schuster
His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice, Robert Samuels & Toluse Olorunnipa, Riverhead Books

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CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD PRIZE
───────────────────
Sponsored By: Christopher Isherwood Foundation

The Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose encompasses fiction, travel writing, memoir and diary and honors exceptional work.

Winner: Solito: A Memoir, Javier Zamora, Hogarth

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CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America, Dahlia Lithwick, Penguin Press

Finalists:

The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy, Anand Giridharadas, Alfred A. Knopf
They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent, Sarah Kendzior, Flatiron Books
The Storm is Here: An American Crucible, Luke Mogelson, Penguin Press
Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World, Dorothy Roberts, Basic Books

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FICTION
─────
Winner: Solenoid, Mircea Cartarescu translated by Sean Cotter, Deep Vellum

Finalists:

Exalted, Anna Dorn, Unnamed Press
Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta, James Hannaham, Little, Brown and Company
The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories, Jamil Jan Kochai, Viking
Paradais, Fernanda Melchor translated by Sophie Hughes, New Directions

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GRAPHIC NOVEL/COMICS
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Winner: Wash Day Diaries, Jamila Rowser, Robyn Smith, Chronicle Books

Finalists:

Dog Biscuits, Alex Graham, Fantagraphics
Talk to My Back, Yamada Murasaki translated by Ryan Holmberg, Drawn & Quarterly
Men I Trust, Tommi Parrish, Fantagraphics
Joseph Smith and the Mormons, Noah Van Sciver, Abrams ComicArts

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HISTORY
─────
Winner: By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners, Margaret A. Burnham, W.W. Norton & Company

Finalists:

Picasso’s War: How Modern Art Came to America, Hugh Eakin, Crown
The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family, Kerri K. Greenidge, Liveright
The Contagion of Liberty: The Politics of Smallpox in the American Revolution, Andrew M. Wehrman, Johns Hopkins University Press
Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of our National Identity, Donald Yacovone, Pantheon

─────────────
INNOVATOR’S AWARD
─────────────
The Innovator’s Award (added in 2009) recognizes the people and institutions that are doing cutting edge work to bring books, publishing and storytelling into the future, whether in terms of new business models, new technologies or new applications of narrative art.

Winner: Freedom to Read Foundation

────────────
MYSTERY/THRILLER
────────────
Winner: Secret Identity, Alex Segura, Flatiron Books

Finalists:

We Lie Here: A Thriller, Rachel Howzell Hall, Thomas & Mercer
Back to the Garden, Laurie R. King, Bantam
All That’s Left Unsaid: A Novel, Tracey Lien, William Morrow
The Cartographers: A Novel, Peng Shepherd, William Morrow

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems, Dionne Brand, Duke University Press Books

Finalists:

Martian: The Saint of Loneliness, James Cagney, Nomadic Press
Ante body, Marwa Helal, Nightboat Books
Daughters of Harriet: Poems, Cynthia Parker-Ohene, Center for Literary Publishing
Customs: Poems, Solmaz Sharif, Graywolf Press

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: James Ellroy

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures, Sabrina Imbler, Little, Brown and Company

Finalists:

Life on the Rocks: Building a Future for Coral Reefs, Juli Berwald, Riverhead Books
Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes Through Indigenous Science, Jessica Hernandez, North Atlantic Books
Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants, James Vincent, W.W. Norton & Company
An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, Ed Yong, Random House

────────────────────────
SCI-FI, FANTASY & SPECULATIVE FICTION
────────────────────────
Winner: Spear, Nicola Griffith, Tordotcom

Finalists:

The Book of the Most Precious Substance, Sara Gran, Dreamland Books
The Ballad of Perilous Graves, Alex Jennings, Hachette Book Group/Redhook
The Mountain in the Sea: A Novel, Ray Nayler, MCD
Liberation Day: Stories, George Saunders, Random House

────────────────
YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
────────────────
Winner: Torch, Lyn Miller-Lachmann, Lerner Publishing Group (Carolrhoda Lab®)

Finalists:

Hollow Fires, Samira Ahmed, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
All My Rage, Sabaa Tahir, Razorbill
Hell Followed With Us, Andrew Joseph White, Peachtree Teen
The Most Dazzling Girl in Berlin, Kip Wilson, Versify

2021

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: Brood: A Novel, Jackie Polzin, Doubleday

Finalists:

Assembly, Natasha Brown, Little, Brown and Company
The Recent East, Thomas Grattan, MCD
My Monticello: Fiction, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, Henry Holt & Company
When We Cease to Understand the World, Benjamín Labatut translated by Adrian Nathan West, New York Review Books

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Burning Boy: The Life and Work of Stephen Crane, Paul Auster, Henry Holt & Company

Finalists:

Competing with Idiots: Herman and Joe Mankiewicz, a Dual Portrait, Nick Davis, Alfred A. Knopf
All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler, Rebecca Donner, Little, Brown and Company
Mike Nichols: A Life, Mark Harris, Penguin Press
The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science, John Tresch, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

───────────────────
CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD PRIZE
───────────────────
Sponsored By: Christopher Isherwood Foundation

The Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose encompasses fiction, travel writing, memoir and diary and honors exceptional work.

Winner: Real Estate: A Living Autobiography, Deborah Susan Levy, Bloomsbury

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Midnight In Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could, Adam Schiff, Random House

Finalists:

Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City, Andrea Elliott, Random House
The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, Heather McGhee, One World
Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration, Reuben Jonathan Miller, Little, Brown and Company
Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury, Evan Osnos, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: American Estrangement: Stories, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, W. W. Norton & Company

Finalists:

The Dangers of Smoking In Bed: Stories, Mariana Enriquez translated by Megan McDowell, Hogarth
In the Company of Men, Véronique Tadjo, Other Press
I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness: A Novel, Claire Vaye Watkins, Riverhead Books
Harrow: A Novel, Joy Williams, Alfred A. Knopf

───────────────
GRAPHIC NOVEL/COMICS
───────────────
Winner: Shadow Life, Hiromi Goto & Ann Xu (Illustrator), First Second

Finalists:

Heaven No Hell, Michael DeForge, Drawn & Quarterly
The Waiting, Keum Suk Gendry-Kim translated by Janet Hong, Drawn & Quarterly
No One Else, R. Kikuo Johnson, Fantagraphics
Stone Fruit, Lee Lai, Fantagraphics

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics, Mae Ngai, W. W. Norton & Company

Finalists:

Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance, Mia Bay, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Cuba: An American History, Ada Ferrer, Scribner
African Europeans: An Untold History, Olivette Otele, Basic Books
I’ve Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land, Alaina E. Roberts, University of Pennsylvania Press

────────────
MYSTERY/THRILLER
────────────
Winner: The Turnout: A Novel, Megan Abbott, G.P. Putnam’s Sons

Finalists:

The Dark Hours, Michael Connelly, Little, Brown and Company
Razorblade Tears: A Novel, S.A. Cosby, Flatiron Books
The Collective: A Novel, Alison Gaylin, William Morrow
Velvet Was the Night, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Del Rey Books

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Master Suffering, CM Burroughs, Tupelo Press

Finalists:

Playlist for the Apocalypse: Poems, Rita Dove, W. W. Norton & Company
Floaters: Poems, Martín Espada, W. W. Norton & Company
frank: sonnets, Diane Seuss, Graywolf Press
Yellow Rain: Poems, Mai Der Vang, Graywolf Press

───────────
Ray Bradbury Prize
───────────
The Ray Bradbury Prize for Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction.

Winner: The World Gives Way: A Novel, Marissa Levien, Redhook

Finalists:

Light From Uncommon Stars, Ryka Aoki, Tor Books
Spirits Abroad: Stories, Zen Cho, Small Beer Press
The Dangers of Smoking In Bed: Stories, Mariana Enriquez translated by Megan McDowell, Hogarth
Sorrowland: A Novel, Rivers Solomon, MCD

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Luis J. Rodriguez

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-Human World, Emma Marris, Bloomsbury Publishing

Finalists:

Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World, Katharine Hayhoe, One Signal Publishing
God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning, Meghan O’Gieblyn, Doubleday
The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred, Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, Bold Type Books
A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds, Scott Weidensaul, W. W. Norton & Company

────────────────
YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
────────────────
Winner: From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movement, Paula Yoo, Norton Young Readers

Finalists:

A Snake Falls to Earth, Darcie Little Badger, Levine Querido
Last Night at the Telegraph Club, Malinda Lo, Dutton Books for Young Readers/Penguin Young Readers
Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther Party’s Promise to the People, Kekla Magoon, Candlewick Press
A Sitting in St. James, Rita Williams-Garcia, Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins Children’s Books

2020

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: These Ghosts Are Family: A Novel, Maisy Card, Simon & Schuster

Finalists:

Little Gods, Meng Jin, Custom House
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, Deesha Philyaw, West Virginia University Press
Shuggie Bain, Douglas Stuart, Groove Press
A House is a Body: Stories, Shruti Swamy, Algonquin Books

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck, William Souder, W.W. Norton and Company

Finalists:

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, Heather Clark, Alfred A. Knopf
Warhol, Blake Gopnik, Ecoo
Eleanor, David Michaelis, Simon & Schuster
The Dead are Arising, Les Payne & Tamara Payne, Liveright Publishing Corporation

───────────────────
CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD PRIZE
───────────────────
Sponsored By: Christopher Isherwood Foundation

The Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose encompasses fiction, travel writing, memoir and diary and honors exceptional work.

Winner: Mayflies, Andrew O’Hagan, McClelland & Stewart

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: A Knock at Midnight: A story of Hope, Justice, and Freedom, Brittany K. Barnett, Crown

Finalists:

Waiting for an Echo: The Madness of Incarceration, Christine Montross, M.D., Penguin
Separated: Inside an American Tragedy, Jacob Soboroff, Custom House
The Undocumented Americans, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, One World
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson, Henry Holt & Co.

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: Likes, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalists:

What Happens at Night, Peter Cameron, Catapult
At Night All Blood Is Black, David Diop translated by Anna Moschovakis, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Death of Vivek Oji, Akwaeke Emezi, Riverhead Books
The Office of Historical Corrections: A Novella and Stories, Danielle Evans, Riverhead Books

───────────────
GRAPHIC NOVEL/COMICS
───────────────
Winner: Umma’s Table, Yeon-sik Hong translated by Janet Hong, Drawn & Quarterly

Finalists:

Blue Flag, Vol. 1: Volume 1, KAITO, Flatiron Books
Sports is Hell, Ben Passmore, Silver Sprocket
Apsara Engine, Bishakh Som, Feminist Press
Come Home, Indio: A Memoir, Jim Terry, Street Noise Books

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War, Alice Baumgartner, Basic Books

Finalists:

The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Expelling Immigrants, Adam Goodman, Princeton University Press
The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States, Walter Johnson, Basic Books
Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All, Martha S. Jones, Basic Books
The United States of War: A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State, David Vine, University of California Press

─────────────
INNOVATOR’S AWARD
─────────────
The Innovator’s Award (added in 2009) recognizes the people and institutions that are doing cutting edge work to bring books, publishing and storytelling into the future, whether in terms of new business models, new technologies or new applications of narrative art.

Winner: Book Industry Charitable Organization

────────────
MYSTERY/THRILLER
────────────
Winner: A Beautiful Crime, Chrisopher Bollen, Harper Perennial

Finalists:

Blacktop Wasteland, S.A. Cosby, Riverhead Books
And Now She’s Gone, Rachel Howzell Hall, Forge
Little Secrets, Jennifer Hillier, Minotaur Books
These Women, Ivy Pochoda, Ecco

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Obit, Victoria Chang, Copper Canyon Press

Finalists:

Borderland Apocrypha, Anthony Cody, Omnidawn
Postcolonial Love Poem, Natalie Diaz, Graywolf Press
Love Child’s Hotbed of Occasional Poetry: Poems and Artifacts, Nikky Finney, Triquarterly Books
The Age of Phillis, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Wesleyan University Press

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Leslie Marmon Silko

────────────────────────
SCI-FI, FANTASY & SPECULATIVE FICTION
────────────────────────
Winner: The Only Good Indians, Stephen Graham Jones, Gallery / Saga Press

Finalists:

Piranesi, Susanna Clarke, Bloomsbury
Lakewood, Megan Giddings, Amistad Press
The City We Became: A Novel (The Great Cities Trilogy, 1) , N.K. Jemisin, Orbit
Where the Wild Ladies Are, Aoko Matsuda translated by Polly Barton, Soft Skull

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: The Smallest Lights in the Universe: A Memoir, Sara Seager, Crown

Finalists:

The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values, Brian Christian, W. W. Norton & Company
Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life, Lulu Miller, Simon & Schuster
The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another, Ainissa Ramirez, MIT Press
The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World, Patrik Svensson, Ecco

────────────────
YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
────────────────
Winner: The Black Flamingo, Dean Atta, Balzer & Bray / Harperteen

Finalists:

Legendborn, Tracy Deonn, Margaret K. McElderry Books
Go with the Flow, Karen Schneemann, Lily Williams, First Second
The Snow Fell Three Graves Deep: Voices from the Donner Party, Allan Wolf, Candlewick Press
Punching the Air, Ibi Zoboi, Yusef Salaam, Balzer & Bray / Harperteen

2019

─────────────────────────────
THE ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
─────────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: The Old Drift, Namwali Serpell, Hogarth

Finalists:

Winslow In West Mills, De’Shawn Charles, Bloomsbury Publishing
Optic Nerve, Maria Gainza translated by Thomas Bunstead, Catapult
Say Say Say: A Novel, Lila Savage, Alfred A. Knopf
Marilou is Everywhere, Sarah Elaine Smith, Riverhead Books

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Our Man, George Packer, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

The Club: Johnson, Boswell and the Friends Who Shaped an Age, Leo Damrosch, Pantheon
First: Sandra Day O’Connor, Evan Thomas First, Random House
Fay Wray and Robert Riskin: A Hollywood Memoir, Victoria Riskin, W. W. Norton & Company
Zora and Langston: A Story of Friendship and Betrayal, Yuval Taylor, Random House

───────────────────
CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD PRIZE
───────────────────
Sponsored By: Christopher Isherwood Foundation

The Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose encompasses fiction, travel writing, memoir and diary and honors exceptional work.

Winner: Black Is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine, Emily Bernard, Alfred A. Knopf Publishing Group

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration, Emily Bazelon, Random House

Finalists:

The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California, Mark Arax, Alfred A. Knopf
Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators, Ronan Farrow, Little, Brown and Company
The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You, Dina Nayeri, Catapult
No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us, Rachel Louise Snyder, Bloomsbury Publishing

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: The Topeka School: A Novel, Ben Lerner, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalists:

Stay and Fight: A Novel, Madeline Fitch, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Shadow King: A Novel, Maaza Mengiste, W. W. Norton & Company
We, the Survivors: A Novel, Tash Aw We, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Nickel Boys: A Novel, Colson Whitehead, Doubleday

───────────────
GRAPHIC NOVEL/COMICS
───────────────
Winner: The Hard Tomorrow, Eleanor Davis, Drawn and Quarterly

Finalists:

Leaving Richard’s Valley, Michael DeForge, Drawn and Quarterly
Grass, Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, Drawn and Quarterly
Is This How You See Me, Jaime Hernandez, Fantagraphics
Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me, Mariko Tamaki & Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, First Second

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South, Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, Yale University Press

Finalists:

A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution, Toby Green, University of Chicago Press
Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century, Charles King, Doubleday
The Cigarette: A Political History, Sarah Milov, Harvard University Press
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present, David Treuer, Riverhead Books

─────────────
INNOVATOR’S AWARD
─────────────
The Innovator’s Award (added in 2009) recognizes the people and institutions that are doing cutting edge work to bring books, publishing and storytelling into the future, whether in terms of new business models, new technologies or new applications of narrative art.

Winner: WriteGirl

────────────
MYSTERY/THRILLER
────────────
Winner: Your House Will Pay, Steph Cha, Ecco

Finalists:

The Night Fire, Michael Connelly, Little, Brown and Company
The Lost Man, Jane Harper, Flatiron Books
Lady in the Lake, Laura Lippman, William Morrow
Heaven, My Home, Attica Locke, Mulholland Books

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Deaf Republic: Poems, Ilya Kaminsky, Graywolf Press

Finalists:

Felon: Poems, Reginald Dwayne, W.W. Norton & Company
Oculus: Poems, Sally Wen Mao, Graywolf Press
Dunce, Mary Ruefle, Wave Books
Be Recorder: Poems, Carmen Giménez Smith, Graywolf Press

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Walter Mosley

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: Figuring, Maria Popova, Pantheon

Finalists:

Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom, Katherine Eban, Ecco
Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster, Adam Higginbotham, Simon & Schuster
Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, Caroline Criado Perez, Harry N. Abrams
Superior: The Return of Race Science, Angela Saini, Beacon Press

────────────────
YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
────────────────
Winner: When the Ground is Hard, Malla Nunn, G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers

Finalists:

Shout, Laurie Halse Anderson, Viking Children’s Books
Dig, A.S. King translated by Dig, Dutton Books for Young Readers
Butterfly Yellow, Thanhha Lai, HarperCollins Books for Young Readers
Patron Saints of Nothing, Randy Ribay, Kokila/Penguin Young Readers

2018

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: Heads of the Colored People: Stories, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Atria / 37 INK

Finalists:

The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish, Katya Apekina, Two Dollar Radio
Asymmetry, Lisa Halliday, Simon & Schuster
The Incendiaries: A Novel, R. O. Kwon, Riverhead Books
There There: A Novel, Tommy Orange, Alfred A. Knopf

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, David W. Blight, Simon and Schuster

Finalists:

Reporter: A Memoir, Seymour M. Hersh, Alfred A. Knopf
American Eden: David Hosack, Botany and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic, Victoria Johnson, Liveright/W.W. Norton
Reagan: An American Journey, Bob Spitz, Penguin Press
Educated: A Memoir, Tara Westover, Random House

───────────────────
CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD PRIZE
───────────────────
Sponsored By: Christopher Isherwood Foundation

The Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose encompasses fiction, travel writing, memoir and diary and honors exceptional work.

Winner: Heavy: An American Memoir, Kiese Laymon, Scribner

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border, Francisco Cantú, Riverhead Books

Finalists:

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, John Carreyrou, Alfred A. Knopf
The Fifth Risk, Michael Lewis, W. W. Norton & Company
Becoming, Michelle Obama, Crown Publishing Group
The Library Book, Susan Orlean, Simon & Schuster

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: The Great Believers: A Novel, Rebecca Makkai, Viking

Finalists:

Washington Black, Esi Edugyan, Alfred A. Knopf
The Wildlands: A Novel, Abby Geni, Counterpoint
An American Marriage: A Novel, Tayari Jones, Algonquin Books
Warlight: A Novel, Michael Ondaatje, Alfred A. Knopf

───────────────
GRAPHIC NOVEL/COMICS
───────────────
Winner: On A Sunbeam, Tillie Walden, First Second

Finalists:

The Pervert, Remy Boydell/ Michelle Perez, Image Comics
Why Art?, Eleanor Davis, Fantagraphics Books
Shit is Real, Aisha Franz, Drawn and Quarterly
The Strange, Jérôme Ruillier, Drawn and Quarterly

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: Travelers In the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism 1919-1945, Julia Boyd, Pegasus Books

Finalists:

Scots & Catalans Union & Disunion, J.H. Elliott, Yale University Press
Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan, Ruby Lal, W.W. Norton & Company
The Browns of California: The Family Dynasty that Transformed a State and Shaped a Nation, Miriam Pawel, Bloomsbury Publishing
Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution, Priya Satia, Penguin Press

─────────────
INNOVATOR’S AWARD
─────────────
The Innovator’s Award (added in 2009) recognizes the people and institutions that are doing cutting edge work to bring books, publishing and storytelling into the future, whether in terms of new business models, new technologies or new applications of narrative art.

Winner: Library of America

────────────
MYSTERY/THRILLER
────────────
Winner: My Sister, The Serial Killer: A Novel, Oyinkan Braithwaite, Doubleday

Finalists:

Give Me Your Hand, Megan Abbott, Little, Brown & Co.
Green Sun, Kent Anderson, Mulholland Books/Little, Brown & Co.
November Road: A Novel, Lou Berney, William Morrow
The Perfect Nanny: A Novel, Leila Slimani, Penguin Books

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Wild is the Wind: Poems, Carl Phillips, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalists:

feeld, Jos Charles, Milkweed Editions
American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, Terrance Hayes, Penguin Books
Ghost of, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Omnidawn
Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl: Poems, Diane Seuss, Graywolf Press

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Terry Tempest Williams

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America, Beth Macy, Little, Brown and Company

Finalists:

Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World, Marcia Bjornerud, Princeton University Press
Nine Pints: A Journey Through the Money, Medicine, and Mysteries of Blood, Rose George, Metropolitan Books
Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, Eliza Griswold, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
What the Eyes Don’t See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City, Mona Hanna-Attisha, One World

────────────────
YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
────────────────
Winner: The Poet X, Elizabeth Acevedo, HarperTeen

Finalists:

Picture Us in the Light, Kelly Loy Gilbert, Disney-Hyperion
A Few Red Drops: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919, Claire Hartfield, Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books for Young Readers
Hey, Kiddo!, Jarrett Krosoczka, Graphix/Scholastic Books
The Astonishing Color of After: A Novel, Emily X.R. Pan, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

2017

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: Sour Heart, Jenny Zhang, Lenny / Random House

Finalists:

The Idiot, Elif Batuman, Penguin Press
Goodbye, Vitamin, Rachel Khong, Henry Holt and Co.
Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado, Graywolf
My Absolute Darling, Gabriel Tallent, Riverhead Books

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Henry David Thoreau: A Life, Laura Dassow Walls, University Of Chicago Press

Finalists:

Grant, Ron Chernow, Penguin Press
Ali: A Life, Jonathan Eig, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Richard Nixon: The Life, John A. Farrell, Doubleday
Fasting and Feasting: The Life of Visionary Food Writer Patience Gray, Adam Federman, Chelsea Green Publishing

───────────────────
CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD PRIZE
───────────────────
Sponsored By: Christopher Isherwood Foundation

The Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose encompasses fiction, travel writing, memoir and diary and honors exceptional work.

Winner: The Hue and Cry at our House, Benjamin Taylor, Viking

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, Nancy MacLean, Viking

Finalists:

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy, Ta-Nehisi Coates, One World
Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, James Forman Jr., Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life, Lauren Markham, Crown
The End of Loyalty: The Rise and Fall of Good Jobs in America, Rick Wartzman, Public Affairs

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: Exit West, Mohsin Hamid, Riverhead Books

Finalists:

The Changeling, Victor LaValle, Spiegel & Grau
The Burning Girl, Claire Messud, W. W. Norton & Company
Ghachar Ghochar, Vivek Shanbhag translated by Srinath Perur, Penguin Books
Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward, Scribner

───────────────
GRAPHIC NOVEL/COMICS
───────────────
Winner: Present, Leslie Stein, Drawn and Quarterly

Finalists:

Everything is Flammable, Gabrielle Bell, Uncivilized Books
The Interview, Manuele Fior translated by Jamie Richards, Fantagraphics
Anti-Gone, Connor Willumsen, Koyama Press
Iceland, Yuichi Yokoyama, Retrofit Comics/Big Planet Comics

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, Dan Egan, W. W. Norton & Company

Finalists:

London’s Triumph: Merchants, Adventurers, and Money in Shakespeare’s City, Stephen Alford, Bloomsbury USA
Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam, Mark Bowden, Atlantic Monthly Press
The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America, Frances Fitzgerald, Simon & Schuster
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, Richard Rothstein, Liveright/w. w. Norton & Company

─────────────
INNOVATOR’S AWARD
─────────────
The Innovator’s Award (added in 2009) recognizes the people and institutions that are doing cutting edge work to bring books, publishing and storytelling into the future, whether in terms of new business models, new technologies or new applications of narrative art.

Winner: Glory Edim / Well-Read Black Girl

────────────
MYSTERY/THRILLER
────────────
Winner: A Book of American Martyrs, Joyce Carol Oates, Ecco

Finalists:

The Late Show, Michael Connelly, Little, Brown and Company
The Night Ocean, Paul La Farge, Penguin Press
Bluebird, Bluebird, Attica Locke, Mulholland Books
Wonder Valley, Ivy Pochoda, Ecco

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Incendiary Art: Poems, Patricia Smith, TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press

Finalists:

Daylily Called it A Dangerous Moment, Alessandra Lynch, Alice James Books
In the Language of my Captor, Shane McCrae, Wesleyan University Press
semiautomatic, Evie Shockley, Wesleyan University Press
For the Scribe, David Wojahn, University of Pittsburgh Press

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: John Rechy

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, Robert M. Sapolsky, Penguin Press

Finalists:

Making Sense of Science: Separating Substance from Spin, Cornelia Dean, Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press
A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution, Jennifer A. Doudna & Samuel H. Sternberg, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, Max Tegmark, Alfred A. Knopf
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, Matthew Walker, Scribner

────────────────
YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
────────────────
Winner: Long Way Down, Jason Reynolds, Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books

Finalists:

Genuine Fraud, E. Lockhart, Delacorte Press
The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives, Dashka Slater, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas, Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins Children’s Publishing
Piecing Me Together, Renée Watson, Bloomsbury Children’s Books

2016

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: The Nix, Nathan Hill, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

Spill Simmer Falter Wither, Sara Baume, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
The Whale: A Love Story, Mark Beauregard, Viking
Ways to Disappear, Idra Novey, Little, Brown and Company
The Bed Moved, Rebecca Schiff, Alfred A. Knopf

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939, Volker Ullrich, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart, Claire Harman, Alfred A. Knopf
Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilie, Ross King, Bloomsbury USA
Kill ‘Em and Leave: Searching for the Real James Brown, James McBride, Spiegel & Grau
Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey, Frances Wilson, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

───────────────────
CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD PRIZE
───────────────────
Sponsored By: Christopher Isherwood Foundation

The Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose encompasses fiction, travel writing, memoir and diary and honors exceptional work.

Winner: Heavy: They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement, Wesley Lowery, Little, Brown and Company

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, Svetlana Alexievich translated by Bela Shayevich, Random House

Finalists:

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Matthew Desmond, Crown
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, Jane Mayer, Doubleday
City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp, Ben Rawlence, Picador
A Rage for Order: The Middle East in Turmoil, from Tahrir Square to ISIS, Robert F. Worth, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: Imagine Me Gone, Adam Haslett, Little, Brown and Company

Finalists:

What Belongs to You, Garth Greenwell, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Sweet Lamb of Heaven, Lydia Millet, W. W. Norton and Company
Swing Time, Zadie Smith, Penguin Press
Innocents and Others, Dana Spiotta, Scribner

───────────────
GRAPHIC NOVEL/COMICS
───────────────
Winner: Beverly, Nick Drnaso, Drawn & Quarterly

Finalists:

The Artist, Anna Haifisch, Breakdown Press LTD
Don’t Come in Here, Patrick Kyle, Koyama Press
What Is Obscenity: The Story of a Good for Nothing Artist and Her Pussy, Rokudenashiko, Koyama Press
Demon: Volume 1, Jason Shiga, First Second/Macmillan

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873, Benjamin Madley, Yale University Press

Finalists:

Where the Jews Aren’t: The Sad and Absurd Story of Birobidzhan, Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Region, Masha Gessen, Schocken Books
Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939, Adam Hochschild, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, Nancy Isenberg, Viking
Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, Heather Ann Thompson, Pantheon

─────────────
INNOVATOR’S AWARD
─────────────
The Innovator’s Award (added in 2009) recognizes the people and institutions that are doing cutting edge work to bring books, publishing and storytelling into the future, whether in terms of new business models, new technologies or new applications of narrative art.

Winner: Ruebén Martinez

────────────
MYSTERY/THRILLER
────────────
Winner: Dodgers, Bill Beverly, Crown

Finalists:

His Bloody Project: Documents Relating to the Case of Roderick Macrae, Graeme Macrae Burnet, Skyhorse Publishing
The Girls, Emma Cline, Random House
The North Water, Ian McGuire, Henry Holt and Co
Darktown, Thomas Mullen, 37 Ink/Atria Books

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Gap Gardening: Selected Poems, Rosmarie Waldrop, New Directions

Finalists:

House of Lords and Commons: Poems, Ishion Hutchinson, Straus and Giroux
Mr. Memory & Other Poems, Phillis Levin, Penguin Books
World of Made and Unmade, Jane Mead, Alice James Books
A Woman of Property, Robyn Schiff, Penguin Books

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Thomas McGuane

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets, Luke Dittrich, Random House

Finalists:

Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War, Mary Roach, W. W. Norton and Company
Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond, Sonia Shah, Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Light: A Radiant History from Creation to the Quantum Age, Bruce Watson, Bloomsbury USA
I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life, Ed Yong, Ecco

────────────────
YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
────────────────
Winner: The Lie Tree, Frances Hardinge, Harry N. Abrams

Finalists:

The Head of the Saint, Socorro Acioli translated by Daniel Hahn, Delacorte
The Passion of Dolssa, Julie Berry, Viking Books for Young Readers
March: Book Three, John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell, Top Shelf Productions
Burn, Baby, Burn, Meg Medina, Candlewick

2015

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: The Fishermen, Chigozie Obioma, Little, Brown and Company

Finalists:

Binary Star, Sarah Gerard, Two Dollar Radio
Against the Country, Ben Metcalf, Random House
Girl at War, Sara Novic, Random House
The Miracle Girl, Andrew Roe, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Listening to Stone: The Art and Life of Isamu Noguchi, Hayden Herrera, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalists:

Fortune’s Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth, Terry Alford, Oxford University Press
Jonas Salk: A Life, Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs, Oxford University Press
Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane, Patrick McGilligan, HarperCollins
Mary McGrory The First Queen of Journalism, John Norris, Viking

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security, Sarah Chayes, W. W. Norton and Company

Finalists:

Blue: The LAPD and the Battle to Redeem American Policing, Joe Domanick, Simon & Schuster
Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic, Sam Quinones, Bloomsbury Press
Children of the Stone: The Power of Music in a Hard Land, Sandy Tolan, Bloomsbury USA
How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century, and the Patient Zero of Piracy, Stephen Witt, Viking

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: The Story of My Teeth, Valeria Luiselli translated by Christina MacSweeney, Coffee House Press

Finalists:

The Green Road, Anne Enright, W. W. Norton and Company
Delicious Foods, James Hannaham, Little, Brown and Company
Fortune Smiles, Adam Johnson, Random House
Beautiful Bureaucrat, Helen Phillips, Henry Holt and Co.

───────────────
GRAPHIC NOVEL/COMICS
───────────────
Winner: Arab of the Future: A Childhood in the Middle East, 1978-1984: A Graphic Memoir, Riad Sattouf, Metropolitan Books

Finalists:

New Construction: Two More Stories, Sam Alden, Uncivlized Books
Tim Ginger, Julian Hanshaw, Top Shelf Productions, an imprint of IDW Publishing
Honor Girl: A Graphic Memoir, Maggie Thrash, Candlewick
Soldier’s Heart: The Campaign to Understand My WWII Veteran Father: A Daughter’s Memoir (You’ll Never Know), Carol Tyler, Fantagraphics

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel, Dan Ephron, W. W. Norton & Company

Finalists:

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, Mary Beard, Liveright/W. W. Norton and Company
Dark Places of the Earth: The Voyage of the Slave Ship Antelope, Jonathan M. Bryant, Liveright/W. W. Norton and Company
Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story, David Maraniss, Simon & Schuster
This Gulf of Fire: The Destruction of Lisbon, or Apocalypse in the Age of Science and Reason, Mark Molesky, Alfred A. Knopf

─────────────
INNOVATOR’S AWARD
─────────────
The Innovator’s Award (added in 2009) recognizes the people and institutions that are doing cutting edge work to bring books, publishing and storytelling into the future, whether in terms of new business models, new technologies or new applications of narrative art.

Winner: James Patterson

────────────
MYSTERY/THRILLER
────────────
Winner: The Cartel, Don Winslow, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

The Long and Faraway Gone, Lou Berney, William Morrow
The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Grove Press
Bull Mountain, Brian Panowich, G.P. Putnam’s Sons
The Whites, Richard Price, Henry Holt & Company

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: From the New World: Poems 1976-2014, Jorie Graham, Ecco/HarperCollins

Finalists:

Chord, Rick Barot, Sarabande Books
Voyage of the Sable Venus, Robin Coste Lewis, Alfred A. Knopf
The Ruined Elegance, Fiona Sze-Lorrain, Princeton University Press
Shirt in Heaven, Jean Valentine, Copper Canyon Press

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Juan Felipe Herrera

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World, Andrea Wulf, Vintage

Finalists:

Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots, John Markoff, Ecco/HarperCollins
The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, David J. Morris, Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of De-Extinction, Beth Shapiro, Princeton University Press
Rust: The Longest War, Jonathan Waldman, Simon & Schuster

──────────────
YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
──────────────
Winner: My Seneca Village, Marilyn Nelson, Namelos

Finalists:

Drowned City: Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans, Don Brown, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books for Young Readers
The Boy in the Black Suit, Jason Reynolds, Atheneum Books for Young Readers
The Hired Girl, Laura Amy Schlitz, Candlewick
Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War, Steve Sheinkin, Roaring Brook Press

2014

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: Faces in the Crowd, Valeria Luiselli translated by Christina MacSweeney, Coffee House Press

Finalists:

Man V. Nature: Stories, Diane Cook, HarperCollins
Wolf in White Van, John Darnielle, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, Eimear McBride, Coffee House Press
The Heaven of Animals: Stories, David James Poissant, Simon & Schuster

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Napoleon: A Life, Andrew Roberts, Viking

Finalists:

Updike, Adam Begley, HarperCollins
Eugene O’Neill: A Life in Four Acts, Robert M. Dowling, Yale University Press
Isabella: The Warrior Queen, Kirstin Downey, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday
Stalin: Volume 1 – Paradoxes of Power 1878-1928, Stephen Kotkin, The Penguin Press

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League, Jeff Hobbs, Scribner

Finalists:

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, Atul Gawande, Metropolitan Books
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, Bryan Stevenson, Spiegel & Grau
The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, Matt Taibbi, Spiegel & Grau
Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free, Héctor Tobar, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: The Blazing World, Siri Hustvedt, Simon & Schuster

Finalists:

The Emerald Light in the Air: Stories, Donald Antrim, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Silence Once Begun, Jesse Ball, Pantheon
Dept. of Speculation, Jenny Offill, Alfred A. Knopf
Boy, Snow, Bird, Helen Oyeyemi, Riverhead

───────────────
GRAPHIC NOVEL/COMICS
───────────────
Winner: The Love Bunglers, Jaime Hernandez, Fantagraphics Books

Finalists:

Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Roz Chast, Bloomsbury
An Iranian Metamorphosis, Mana Neyestani, Uncivilized Books
Arséne Schrauwen, Olivier Schrauwen, Fantagraphics
This One Summer, Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki, First Second

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: The Deluge: The Great War/America and the Remaking of the Global Order 1916-1931, Adam Tooze, Viking

Finalists:

The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens’ London, Judith Flanders, Thomas Dunne Books
Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War, Mark Harris, The Penguin Press
The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, Walter Isaacson, Simon & Schuster
Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David, Lawrence Wright, Alfred A. Knopf

─────────────
INNOVATOR’S AWARD
─────────────
The Innovator’s Award (added in 2009) recognizes the people and institutions that are doing cutting edge work to bring books, publishing and storytelling into the future, whether in terms of new business models, new technologies or new applications of narrative art.

Winner: LeVar Burton

────────────
MYSTERY/THRILLER
────────────
Winner: Dry Bones in the Valley, Tom Bouman, W.W. Norton and Company

Finalists:

The Painter, Peter Heller, Alfred A. Knopf
After I’m Gone, Laura Lippman, William Morrow
Sins of Our Fathers, Shawn Lawrence Otto, Milkweed Editions
The Girl With a Clock for a Heart, Peter Swanson, William Morrow

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine, Graywolf Press

Finalists:

Peace, Gillian Conoley, Omnidawn
Blood Lyrics: Poem, Katie Ford, Graywolf Press
In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems, 1987-2011, Peter Gizzi, Wesleyan University Press
The Feel Trio, Fred Moten, Letter Machine Editions

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: TC Boyle

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Elizabeth Kolbert, Henry Holt & Co.

Finalists:

Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time, Michael Benson, Abrams
Missing Microbes, How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues, Martin J. Blaser, Henry Holt and Co.
This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, Naomi Klein, Simon & Schuster
Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking), Christian Rudder, Crown Publishers

────────────────
YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
────────────────
Winner: The Family Romanov: Murder Rebellion and the Fall of Imperial Russia, Candace Fleming, Schwartz & Wade/Random House Children’s Group

Finalists:

Eyes Wide Open: Going Behind the Environmental Headlines, Paul Fleischman, Candlewick
The Story of Owen: Dragon Slayer of Trondheim, E.K. Johnston, Carolrhoda Lab/Lerner Publishing
Grasshopper Jungle, Andrew Smith, Dutton Children’s Books
Brown Girl Dreaming, Jacqueline Woodson, Nancy Paulsen Books

2013

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: We Need New Names, NoViolet Bulawayo, Reagan Arthur Books

Finalists:

Mira Corpora, Jeff Jackson, Two Dollar Radio
The Night Guest, Fiona McFarlane, Faber & Faber
I Want to Show You More, Jamie Quatro, Grove Press
The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories, Ethan Rutherford, Ecco / HarperCollins

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Bolivar: American Liberator, Marie Arana, Simon & Schuster

Finalists:

Wilson, A. Scott Berg, G.P. Putnam’s Sons
The Red Man’s Bones: George Catlin, Artist and Showman, Benita Eisler, W. W. Norton and Company
Country Girl: A Memoir, Edna O’Brien, Little, Brown & Company
American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell, Deborah Solomon, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital, Sheri Fink, Crown

Finalists:

Thank You for Your Service, David Finkel, Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Detroit: An American Autopsy, Charlie LeDuff, The Penguin Press
Manifest Injustice: The True Story of a Convicted Murderer and the Lawyers Who Fought for His Freedom, Barry Siegel, Henry Holt and Company
Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief, Lawrence Wright, Alfred A. Knopf

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki, Viking

Finalists:

Percival Everett by Virgil Russell, Percival Everett, Graywolf Press
The Woman Upstairs, Claire Messud, Alfred A. Knopf
Spectacle: Stories, Susan Steinberg, Graywolf Press
The Maid’s Version: A Novel, Daniel Woodrell, Little, Brown & Company

───────────────
GRAPHIC NOVEL/COMICS
───────────────
Winner: Today is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life, Ulli Lust, Fantagraphics Books

Finalists:

Incidents in the Night: Volume 1, David B., Uncivilized Books
Hand-Drying in America: And Other Stories, Ben Katchor, Pantheon
The End, Anders Nilsen, Fantagraphics
The Great War: July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme, Joe Sacco, W. W. Norton and Company

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, Christopher Clark, HarperCollins

Finalists:

FDR and the Jews, Richard Breitman & Allan J. Lichtman, Belknap Press of Harvard University
The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend, Glenn Frankel, Bloomsbury USA
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Simon & Schuster
The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832, Alan Taylor, W. W. Norton and Company

─────────────
INNOVATOR’S AWARD
─────────────
The Innovator’s Award (added in 2009) recognizes the people and institutions that are doing cutting edge work to bring books, publishing and storytelling into the future, whether in terms of new business models, new technologies or new applications of narrative art.

Winner: John Green

────────────
MYSTERY/THRILLER
────────────
Winner: The Cuckoo’s Calling, J.K. Rowling Writing as Robert Galbraith, Mulholland Books/Little, Brown & Company

Finalists:

Hour of the Red God, Richard Crompton, Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Sycamore Row, John Grisham, Doubleday Books
The Rage, Gene Kerrigan, Europa Editions
The Collini Case, Ferdinand von Schirach, Viking

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Collected Poems, Ron Padgett, Coffee House Press

Finalists:

The Inside of an Apple, Joshua Beckman, Wave Books
Hello, the Roses, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, New Directions
On Ghosts, Elizabeth Robinson, Solid Objects
Debts & Lessons, Lynn Xu, Omnidawn

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Susan Straight

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: Countdown: Our Last Best Hope for a Future on Earth?, Alan Weisman, Little Brown & Company

Finalists:

Social: Why Our Brains are Wired to Connect, Matthew D. Lieberman, Crown
Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures, Virginia Morell, Crown
Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction, Annalee Newitz, Doubleday Books
Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience, Sally Satel, Scott O. Lilienfeld, Basic Books

────────────────
YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
────────────────
Winner: Boxers & Saints, Gene Luen Yang, First Second/Macmillan

Finalists:

Mortal Fire, Elizabeth Knox, Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers
Fangirl, Rainbow Rowell, St. Martin’s Griffin
What the Heart Knows: Chants, Charms & Blessings, Joyce Sidman, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books for Young Readers
Lockwood & Co: The Screaming Staircase, Jonathan Stroud, Disney-Hyperion

2012

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: Seating Arrangements, Maggie Shipstead, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

Fobbit, David Abrams, Black Cat/Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
The Natural Order of Things, Kevin P. Keating, Aqueous Books
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Book Store: A Novel, Robin Sloan, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Robert A. Caro, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace, H.W. Brands, Doubleday
A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman, Alice Kessler-Harris, Bloomsbury Press
The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy, David Nasaw, Penguin Press
The One: The Life and Music of James Brown, RJ Smith, Gotham Books

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, Katherine Boo, Random House

Finalists:

Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, Steve Coll, Penguin Press
On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines – and Future, Karen Elliott House, Alfred A. Knopf
Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds, Jim Sterba, Crown
The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor, Jake Tapper, Little, Brown and Company

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Ben Fountain, Ecco

Finalists:

The Middlesteins: A Novel, Jami Attenberg, Grand Central Publishing
Telegraph Avenue, Michael Chabon, HarperCollins Publishers
Arcadia, Lauren Groff, Voice/Hyperion
Magnificence, Lydia Millet, W.W. Norton & Company
Shine Shine Shine, Lydia Netzer, St. Martin’s Press

───────────────
GRAPHIC NOVEL/COMICS
───────────────
Winner: Everything Together: Collected Stories, Sammy Harkham, PictureBox

Finalists:

Unterzakhn, Leela Corman, Schocken
Cruisin’ With the Hound: The Life and Times of Fred Toote, Spain Rodriguez, Fantagraphics
Building Stories, Chris Ware, Pantheon
Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama, Alison Bechdel, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: America’s Great Debate: Henry Clay/Stephen A. Douglas and the Compromise That Preserved the Union, Fergus M. Bordewich, Simon & Schuster

Finalists:

Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty, John Barry, Viking
Empire of Shadows: The Epic Story of Yellowstone, George Black, St. Martin’s Press
A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico, Amy S. Greenberg, Alfred A. Knopf
Rule & Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party from Eisenhower to the Tea Party, Geoffrey Kabaservice, Oxford University Press

─────────────
INNOVATOR’S AWARD
─────────────
The Innovator’s Award (added in 2009) recognizes the people and institutions that are doing cutting edge work to bring books, publishing and storytelling into the future, whether in terms of new business models, new technologies or new applications of narrative art.

Winner: Margaret Atwood

────────────
MYSTERY/THRILLER
────────────
Winner: Broken Harbor, Tana French, Viking

Finalists:

Angelmaker, Nick Harkaway, Alfred A. Knopf
The Thief, Fuminori Nakamura, Soho Crime
The Expats, Chris Pavone, Crown
The Twenty-Year Death, Ariel S. Winter, Hard Case Crime

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Poems 1962-2012, Louise Glück, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalists:

The Ground: Poems, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys: Poems, D. A. Powell, Graywolf Press
Aerial, Bin Ramke, Omnidawn
Gravesend (New California Poetry), Cole Swensen, University of California Press

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Kevin Starr

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History, Florence Williams, W.W. Norton & Company

Finalists:

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain, Crown
Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe, George Dyson, Pantheon
The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human, Jonathan Gottschall, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
The Signal and the Noise: Why so Many Predictions Fail — But Some Don’t, Nate Silver, Penguin Press

────────────────
YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
────────────────
Winner: Ask the Passengers, A.S. King, Little Brown Books For Young Readers

Finalists:

The Drowned Cities, Paolo Bacigalupi, Little Brown Books For Young Readers
My Book of Life by Angel, Martine Leavitt, Margaret Ferguson Books/Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers
Boy 21, Matthew Quick, Little, Brown Books For Young Readers
Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein, Disney-Hyperion

2011

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: Shards, Ismet Prcic, Black Cat/Grove/Atlantic

Finalists:

The Art of Fielding, Chad Harbach, Little, Brown & Company
Ten Thousand Saints, Eleanor Henderson, Ecco/HarperCollins
Leaving the Atocha Station, Ben Lerner, Coffee House Press
The Arriviste, James Wallenstein, Milkweed Editions

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned, John A. Farrell, Doubleday

Finalists:

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, Manning Marable, Viking
Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman, Robert K. Massie, Random House
Reading My Father: A Memoir, Alexandra Styron, Scribner
My Long Trip Home, Mark Whitaker, Simon & Schuster

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalists:

Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything, David Bellos, Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency, Ioan Grillo, Bloomsbury Press
Pakistan: A Hard Country, Anatol Lieven, PublicAffairs
The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science and Fear, Seth Mnookin, Simon & Schuster

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: Luminarium, Alex Shakar, SoHo Press

Finalists:

Ghost Light, Joseph O’Connor, Frances Coady Book/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Cat’s Table, Michael Ondaatje, Alfred A. Knopf
The Buddha in the Attic, Julie Otsuka, Alfred A. Knopf
Binocular Vision: New & Selected Stories, Edith Pearlman, Lookout Books/University of North Carolina Wilmington

───────────────
GRAPHIC NOVEL/COMICS
───────────────
Winner: Finder: Voice, Carla Speed McNeil, Dark Horse

Finalists:

I Will Bite You! And Other Stories, Joseph Lambert, Secret Acres
Celluloid, Dave McKean, Fantagraphics
Congress of the Animals, Jim Woodring, Fantagraphics
Garden, Yuichi Yokoyama, PictureBox

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America, Richard White, W.W. Norton & Company

Finalists:

The Anatomy of a Moment: Thirty-Five Minutes in History and Imagination, Javier Cercas, Bloomsbury Press
1861: The Civil War Awakening, Adam Goodheart, Alfred A. Knopf
To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918, Adam Hochschild, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Molotov’s Magic Lantern: A Journey in Russian History, Rachel Polonsky, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

─────────────
INNOVATOR’S AWARD
─────────────
The Innovator’s Award (added in 2009) recognizes the people and institutions that are doing cutting edge work to bring books, publishing and storytelling into the future, whether in terms of new business models, new technologies or new applications of narrative art.

Winner: Figment

────────────
MYSTERY/THRILLER
────────────
Winner: 11/22/1963, Stephen King, Scribner

Finalists:

Started Early, Took My Dog, Kate Atkinson, Reagan Arthur Books/Hachette Book Group
Plugged, Eoin Colfer, Overlook Press
Snowdrops: A Novel, A.D. Miller, Doubleday
The End of Wasp Season, Denise Mina, Reagan Arthur Books/Hachette Book Group

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Double Shadow: Poems, Carl Phillips, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalists:

Songs of Unreason, Jim Harrison, Copper Canyon Press
Discipline, Dawn Lundy Martin, Nightboat Books
The Public Gardens, Linda Norton, Pressed Wafer
Devotions, Bruce Smith, University of Chicago Press

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Rudolfo Anaya

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius, Sylvia Nasar, Simon & Schuster

Finalists:

A Hole at the Bottom of the Sea: The Race to Kill the BP Oil Gusher, Joel Achenbach, Simon & Schuster
The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood, James Gleick, Pantheon
Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, Mara Hvistendahl, PublicAffairs
Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution, Holly Tucker, W.W. Norton & Company

────────────────
YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
────────────────
Winner: The Big Crunch, Pete Hautman, Scholastic Press

Finalists:

Beauty Queens, Libba Bray, Scholastic Press
A Monster Calls: Inspired by an idea from Siobhan Dowd, Patrick Ness, Candlewick Press
Life: An Exploded Diagram, Mal Peet, Candlewick Press
The Scorpio Races, Maggie Stiefvater, Scholastic Press

2010

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: The Lotus Eaters, Tatjana Soli, St. Martin’s Press

Finalists:

The House of Tomorrow, Peter Bognanni, Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam
The Gin Closet, Leslie Jamison, Free Press/Simon & Schuster
The More I Owe You, Michael Sledge, Counterpoint
Portraits of a Few People I’ve Made Cry: Stories, Christine Sneed, University of Massachusetts Press

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience & Redemption, Laura Hillenbrand, Penguin/Random House

Finalists:

George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I, Miranda Carter, Alfred A. Knopf
The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham, Selina Hastings, Penguin/Random House
Hitch-22: A Memoir, Christopher Hitchens, TWELVE/Hachette Book Group
Colonel Roosevelt, Edmund Morris, Penguin/Random House

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, Michael Lewis, W. W. Norton & Company

Finalists:

The Promise: President Obama, Year One, Jonathan Alter, Simon & Schuster
War, Sebastian Junger, TWELVE/Hachette Book Group
All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis, Joe Nocera, Bethany McLean, Portfolio/Penguin Group
Just Kids, Patti Smith, Ecco/HarperCollins

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: A Visit From the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

Nashville Chrome, Rick Bass, Houghton Mifflin/Harcourt
Something is Out There: Stories, Richard Bausch, Penguin/Random House
Freedom, Jonathan Franzen, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Day for Night, Frederick Reiken, Reagan Arthur Books/Hachette Book Group

───────────────
GRAPHIC NOVEL/COMICS
───────────────
Winner: Duncan the Wonder Dog: Show One, Adam Hines, Adhouse Books

Finalists:

Bodyworld, Dash Shaw, Pantheon
The Lodger, Karl Stevens, KSA Publishing
You’ll Never Know, Book Two: Collateral Damage, C. Tyler, Fantagraphics
Weathercraft, Jim Woodring, Fantagraphics

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: The Killing of Crazy Horse, Thomas Powers, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

Washington: A Life, Ron Chernow, The Penguin Press
Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor/Hiroshima/9-11/Iraq, John W. Dower, W. W. Norton & Company and The New Press
Roosevelt’s Purge: How FDR Fought To Change the Democratic Party, Susan Dunn, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization, Steven Solomon, HarperCollins

─────────────
INNOVATOR’S AWARD
─────────────
The Innovator’s Award (added in 2009) recognizes the people and institutions that are doing cutting edge work to bring books, publishing and storytelling into the future, whether in terms of new business models, new technologies or new applications of narrative art.

Winner: Powell’s Books

────────────
MYSTERY/THRILLER
────────────
Winner: Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, Tom Franklin, William Morrow

Finalists:

Faithful Place, Tana French, Viking
I’d Know You Anywhere, Laura Lippman, William Morrow
Collusion, Stuart Neville, SoHo Press
City of Dragons, Kelli Stanley, Minotaur Books/A Thomas Dunne Book

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Where I Live: New & Selected Poems 1990-2010, Maxine Kumin, W. W. Norton & Company

Finalists:

Pierce the Skin: Selected Poems, 1982-2007, Henri Cole, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
God’s Optimism, Yehoshua November, Main Street Rag
From Unincorporated Territory [Saina], Craig Santos Perez, Omnidawn
To See the Earth Before the End of the World, Ed Roberson, Wesleyan University Press

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Beverly Cleary

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness, Oren Harman, W. W. Norton & Company

Finalists:

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Scribner
Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway, Bloomsbury USA
Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout, Lauren Redniss, It Books/HarperCollins
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot, Crown

────────────────
YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
────────────────
Winner: A Conspiracy of Kings, Megan Whalen Turner, Greenwillow/HarperCollins

Finalists:

Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom and Science, Marc Aronson, Marina Budhos, Clarion Books
Wicked Girls: A Novel of the Salem Witch Trials, Stephanie Hemphill, Balzer & Bray/HarperCollins
The Ring of Solomon, Jonathan Stroud, Disney/Hyperion Books for Children
The Curse of the Wendigo (The Monstrumologist), Rick Yancey, Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing

2009

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: American Rust, Philipp Meyer, Spiegel & Grau

Finalists:

An Elegy for Easterly, Petina Gappah, Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Tinkers, Paul Harding, Bellevue Literary Press
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, Daniyal Mueenuddin, W.W. Norton & Co.
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, Wells Tower, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits, Linda Gordon, W.W. Norton & Co.

Finalists:

The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience, Kirstin Downey, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday
Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth Century Skeptic, Michael Scammell, Random House
Louis D. Brandeis: A Life, Melvin Urofsky, Pantheon
The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst, Kenneth Whyte, Counterpoint Press

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Zeitoun, Dave Eggers, McSweeney’s Books

Finalists:

Columbine, Dave Cullen, TWELVE/Hachette Book Group
The Strength in What Remains, Tracy Kidder, Random House
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn, Alfred A. Knopf
The Healing of America: The Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Healthcare, T. R. Reid, The Penguin Press

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: A Happy Marriage, Rafael Yglesias, Scribner

Finalists:

Heroic Measures, Jill Ciment, Pantheon
The Man in the Wooden Hat, Jane Gardam, Europe Editions
Blame, Michelle Huneven, Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
A Short History of Women, Kate Walbert, Scribner

───────────────
GRAPHIC NOVEL/COMICS
───────────────
Winner: Asterios Polyp, David Mazzucchelli, Pantheon

Finalists:

Luba (A Love and Rockets Book), Gilbert Hernandez, Fantagraphics Books
GoGo Monster, Taiyo Matsumoto, VIZ Media
Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 5: Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe, Bryan Lee O’Malley, Oni Press
Footnotes in Gaza, Joe Sacco, Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Co., LLC

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance 1950–1963, Kevin Starr, Oxford University Press

Finalists:

Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, Richard Holmes, Pantheon
Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line, Martha A. Sandweiss, The Penguin Press
Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic 1789 – 1815, Gordon S. Wood, Oxford University Press
Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940, Amy Louise Wood, University of North Carolina Press

─────────────
INNOVATOR’S AWARD
─────────────
The Innovator’s Award (added in 2009) recognizes the people and institutions that are doing cutting edge work to bring books, publishing and storytelling into the future, whether in terms of new business models, new technologies or new applications of narrative art.

Winner: Dave Eggers

────────────
MYSTERY/THRILLER
────────────
Winner: The Ghosts of Belfast, Stuart Neville, SOHO Press

Finalists:

Bury Me Deep, Megan Abbott, Simon & Schuster
The Hidden Man, David Ellis, Putnam
Black Water Rising, Attica Locke, HarperCollins
A Darker Domain, Val McDermid, HarperCollins

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Practical Water, Brenda Hillman, Wesleyan University Press

Finalists:

Apocalyptic Swing, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Persea Books
Open Interval, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, University of Pittsburgh Press
Dearest Creature, Amy Gerstler, Penguin Poets
What the Right Hand Knows, Tom Healy, Four Way Books

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Evan S. Connell

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom, Graham Farmelo, Basic Books/Perseus Book Group

Finalists:

The Day We Found the Universe, Marcia Bartusiak, Pantheon
Cold: Adventures in the Worlds’ Frozen Places, Bill Streever, Little, Brown & Company
Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, Richard Wrangham, Basic Books/Perseus Book Group
Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science, Carol Kaesuk Yoon, W.W. Norton & Co

────────────────
YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
────────────────
Winner: Marching for Freedom: Walk Together Children and Don’t You Grow Weary, Elizabeth Partridge, Viking Children’s Books/Penguin Group

Finalists:

The Rise and Fall of Senator Joe McCarthy, James Cross Giblin, Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
The Lost Conspiracy, Frances Hardinge, HarperCollins
Charles and Emma: The Darwin’s Leap of Faith, Deborah Heiligman, Henry Holt Books for Young Readers
Tales from Outer Suburbia, Shaun Tan, Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic

2008

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: Finding Nouf, Zoë Ferraris, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Finalists:

Say You’re One of Them, Uwem Akpan, Little, Brown and Co.
The Outcast, Sadie Jones, HarperCollins
Mosquito, Roma Tearne, Europa Editions
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, David Wroblewski, Ecco

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching, Paula J. Giddings, Amistad/HarperCollins

Finalists:

A Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, H.W. Brands, Doubleday
Democracy’s Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent, Ernest Freeberg, Harvard University Press
American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, Jon Meacham, Random House
Chagall: A Biography, Jackie Wullschlager, Alfred A. Knopf

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, Barton Gellman, Penguin Press

Finalists:

The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century, Steve Coll, The Penguin Press
The Forever War, Dexter Filkins, Alfred A. Knopf
The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, Jane Mayer, Doubleday
My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey, Jill Bolte Taylor, Viking

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: Home, Marilynne Robinson, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalists:

The Secret Scripture, Sebastian Barry, Viking
Lush Life, Richard Price, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Size of the World, Joan Silber, W.W. Norton
The God of War, Marisa Silver, Simon & Schuster

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: Hitler’s Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe, Mark Mazower, The Penguin Press

Finalists:

One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War, Michael Dobbs, Alfred A. Knopf
This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, Drew Gilpin Faust, Alfred A. Knopf
Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North, Thomas J. Sugrue, Random House
Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Rick Wartzman, PublicAffairs

────────────
MYSTERY/THRILLER
────────────
Winner: Envy the Night, Michael Koryta, Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Minotaur

Finalists:

The Finder, Colin Harrison, Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Bad Traffic: An Inspector Jian Novel, Simon Lewis, Scribner
The Age of Dreaming, Nina Revoyr, Akashic Books
Child 44, Tom Rob Smith, Grand Central Publishing

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Watching the Spring Festival: Poems, Frank Bidart, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalists:

Sea Change: Poems, Jorie Graham, Ecco
The Kingdom of Ordinary Time: Poems, Marie Howe, W.W. Norton
Ours, Cole Swensen, University of California Press
Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream, Connie Voisine, University of Chicago Press

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Robert Alter

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics, Leonard Susskind, Little, Brown and Co

Finalists:

What the Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life, Avery Gilbert, Crown Publishing
Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul, Kenneth R. Miller, Viking
Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform, Martin J.S. Rudwick, University of Chicago Press
Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life, Carl Zimmer, Pantheon

────────────────
YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
────────────────
Winner: Nation, Terry Pratchett, HarperCollins

Finalists:

The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary, Candace Fleming, Schwartz & Wade/Random House Children’s Books
The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman, HarperCollins
Dark Dude, Oscar Hijuelos, Atheneum/Simon & Schuster
Swallow Me Whole, Nate Powell, Top Shelf Productions

2007

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, Dinaw Mengestu, Riverhead Books

Finalists:

Skylark Farm, Antonia Arslan translated by Geoffrey Brock, Alfred A. Knopf
Twenty Grand: And Other Tales of Love and Money, Rebecca Curtis, Harper Perennial
The Understory, Pamela Erens, Ironweed Press
The Last Chicken in America: A Novel in Stories, Ellen Litman, W.W. Norton

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Young Stalin, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr, Nancy Isenberg, Viking
Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer, Tim Jeal, Yale University Press
Boone: A Biography, Robert Morgan, A Shannon Ravenel Book/Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War, Michael J. Neufeld, Alfred A. Knopf

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point, Elizabeth D. Samet, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalists:

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Ishmael Beah, Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam, Tom Bissell, Pantheon
The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America, Ronald Brownstein, The Penguin Press
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein, Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: Be Near Me, Andrew O’Hagan, Harcourt

Finalists:

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz, Riverhead Books
Last Night at the Lobster, Stewart O’Nan, Viking
Out Stealing Horses: A Novel, Per Petterson, Graywolf Press
The Shadow Catcher: A Novel, Marianne Wiggins, Simon & Schuster

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, Tim Weiner, Doubleday

Finalists:

The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It, David A Bell, Houghton Mifflin
Nixon and Mao: The Week that Changed the World, Margaret Macmillan, Random House
The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow that Changed the Course of World War II, Andrew Nagorski, Simon and Schuster
Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England, Lynne Olson, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

────────────
MYSTERY/THRILLER
────────────
Winner: The Indian Bride, Karin Fossum translated by Charlotte Barslund, Harcourt

Finalists:

Christine Falls: A Novel, Benjamin Black, Henry Holt and Company
Frozen Tracks: An Inspector Erik Winter Novel, Åke Edwardson, Viking
In The Woods, Tana French, Viking
Ice Moon, Jan Costin Wagner translated by John Brownjohn, Harcourt

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Old Heart: Poems, Stanley Plumly, W.W. Norton

Finalists:

Mars Being Red, Marvin Bell, Copper Canyon Press
Ripple Effect: New and Selected Poems, Elaine Equi, Coffee House Press
The Kitchen Sink: New and Selected Poems, 1972-2007, Albert Goldbarth, Graywolf Press
Little Boat, Jean Valentine, Wesleyan University Press

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Maxine Hong Kingston

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: I Am A Strange Loop, Douglas Hofstadter, Basic Books

Finalists:

The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language, Christine Kenneally, Viking
Animal Architects: Building and the Evolution of Intelligence, James L., Carol Grant Gould, Basic Books
Faust in Copenhagen: A Struggle for the Soul of Physics, Gino Segrè, Viking
On Deep History and the Brain, Daniel Lord Smail, University of California Press

────────────────
YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
────────────────
Winner: A Darkling Plain (The Hungry City Chronicles), Philip Reeve, Eos Books/HarperCollins

Finalists:

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie, Little, Brown Young Readers
The White Darkness, Geraldine McCaughrean, HarperTeen
What They Found: Love on 145th Street, Walter Dean Myers, Wendy Lamb Books/Random House
Darkwing, Kenneth Oppel, Eos Books/HarperCollins

2006

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: Whiteman, Tony D’ Souza, Harcourt

Finalists:

Skinner’s Drift: A Novel, Lisa Fugard, Scribner
Golden Country: A Novel, Jennifer Gilmore, Scribner
White Ghost Girls, Alice Greenway, Black Cat / Grove/Atlantic
Mary: A Novel, Janis Cooke Newman, MacAdam/Cage Publishing

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, Debby Applegate, Doubleday

Finalists:

The Librettist of Venice: The Remarkable Life of Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart’s Poet, Casanova’s Friend, and Italian Opera’s Impresario in America, Rodney Bolt, Bloomsbury USA
Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, Neal Gabler, Alfred A. Knopf
Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew across the Middle East Divide, Jeffrey Goldberg, Alfred A. Knopf
The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, Daniel Mendelsohn, HarperCollins

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Douglas Brinkley, William Morrow / HarperCollins

Finalists:

Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance, Ian Buruma, Penguin Press
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Alfred A. Knopf
The Beautiful Fall: Lagerfeld, Saint Laurent, and Glorious Excess in 1970s Paris, Alicia Drake, Little, Brown
Strange Piece of Paradise, Terri Jentz, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: Black Swan Green: A Novel, David Mitchell, Random House

Finalists:

The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo: A Novel, Peter Orner, Little, Brown
A Million Nightingales, Susan Straight, Pantheon Books
Winter’s Bone: A Novel, Daniel Woodrell, Little, Brown
A Woman in Jerusalem, A.B. Yehoshua translated by Hillel Halkin, Harcourt

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68, Taylor Branch, Simon & Schuster

Finalists:

The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West, Niall Ferguson, Penguin Press
Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War, Nathaniel Philbrick, Viking
The Colony, John Tayman, Lisa Drew / Scribner
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, Lawrence Wright, Alfred A. Knopf

────────────
MYSTERY/THRILLER
────────────
Winner: Echo Park: A Novel, Michael Connelly, Little, Brown

Finalists:

City of Tiny Lights, Patrick Neate, Riverhead Books
The Night Gardener: A Novel, George Pelecanos, Little, Brown
The Zero: A Novel, Jess Walter, HarperCollins
The Winter of Frankie Machine, Don Winslow, Alfred A. Knopf

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Black Box, Erin Belieu, Copper Canyon Press

Finalists:

Logorrhea, Adrian C. Louis, TriQuarterly Books / Northwestern University Press
Burning Wyclif, Thom Satterlee, Texas Tech University Press
Ooga-Booga, Frederick Seidel, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Darling Vulgarity, Michael Waters, BOA Editions

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: William Kittredge

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: The First Scientific American: Benjamin Franklin and the Pursuit of Genius, Joyce E. Chaplin, Basic Books

Finalists:

The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors, Ann Gibbons, Doubleday
In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind, Eric R. Kandel, W. W. Norton & Company
This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, Daniel J. Levitin, Dutton
The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth, Edward O. Wilson, W. W. Norton & Company

────────────────
YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
────────────────
Winner: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume 1: The Pox Party, M. T. Anderson, Candlewick Press

Finalists:

Tyrell, Coe Booth, Push / Scholastic
An Abundance of Katherines, John Green, Dutton Books / Penguin Young Readers Group
Just in Case, Meg Rosoff, Wendy Lamb Books / Random House Children’s Books
The Rules of Survival, Nancy Werlin, Dial Books / Penguin Young Readers Group

2005

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: Beasts of No Nation, Uzodinma Iweala, Harper

Finalists:

Garner, Kirstin Allio, Coffee House Press
The Third Reich in Power, Richard J. Evans, Penguin Press HC
A Sudden Country, Karen Fisher, Random House
The Dream Life of Sukhanov, Olga Grushin, A Marian Wood Book/Putnam
John Crow’s Devil, Marlon James, Akashic Books

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Matisse the Master: A Life of Henri Matisse: The Conquest of Colour: 1909-1954, Hilary Spurling, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

Melville: His World and Work, Andrew Delbanco, Alfred A. Knopf
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Simon & Schuster
Mencken: The American Iconoclast, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, Oxford University Press
The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century, Steven Watts, Alfred A. Knopf

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Night Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s War, Anthony Shadid, Henry Holt and Co.

Finalists:

Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse, Steve Bogira, Alfred A. Knopf
Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story, Kurt Eichenwald, Broadway
The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece, Jonathan Harr, Random House
Still Looking: Essays on American Art, John Updike, Alfred A. Knopf

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

The March, E. L. Doctorow, Random House
Veronica, Mary Gaitskill, Pantheon
A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby, Riverhead Hardcover
Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami translated by Philip Gabriel, Vintage Classics

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves, Adam Hochschild, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Finalists:

Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941-1945, Christopher Bayly, Tim Harper, Belknap Press
Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, Tony Judt, Penguin Press
The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, Sean Wilentz, W. W. Norton

────────────
MYSTERY/THRILLER
────────────
Winner: Legends, Robert Littell, The Overlook Press

Finalists:

The Lincoln Lawyer, Michael Connelly, Little, Brown And Company
The Right Madness, James Crumley, Viking
Ash and Bone, John Harvey, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Strange Affair, Peter Robinson, William Morrow

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Refusing Heaven, Jack Gilbert, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

Zeppo’s First Wife: New and Selected Poems (Phoenix Poets), Gail Mazur, University of Chicago Press
The Cachoeira tales, and other poems, Marilyn Nelson, LSU Press
Luck Is Luck: Poems, Lucia Perillo, Random House
Pennyweight Windows: New & Selected Poems, Donald Revell, Alice James Books

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: Before The Fallout: From Marie Curie to Hiroshima, Diana Preston, Walker Books

Finalists:

Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo, Sean B. Carroll, W. W. Norton & Company
Ice: The Nature, the History, and the Uses of an Astonishing Substance, Mariana Gosnell, Alfred A. Knopf
Descent: The Heroic Discovery of the Abyss, Brad Matsen, Pantheon
The Republican War on Science, Chris Mooney, Basic Books

────────────────
YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
────────────────
Winner: You & You & You, Per Nilsson translated by Tara Chace, Front Street

Finalists:

Looking for Alaska, John Green, Dutton Books
Black Juice, Margo Lanagan, HarperTeen
The Center of the World, Andreas Steinhöfel translated by Alisa Jaffa, Delacorte Books for Young Readers
The Messenger, Markus Zusak, Knopf Books for Young Readers

2004

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: Harbor, Lorraine Adams, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

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

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: de Kooning: An American Master, Mark Stevens, Annalyn Swan, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

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

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America and the New Face of American War, Evan Wright, G.P. Putnam’s Sons

Finalists:

The Spiral Staircase: My Climb out of Darkness, Karen Armstrong, Alfred A. Knopf
Blue Blood, Edward Conlon, Riverhead Books
Bound to Please: An Extraordinary One-Volume Literary Education -- Essays on Great Writers and Their Books, Michael Dirda, W. W. Norton & Company
Truth & Beauty: A Friendship, Ann Patchett, HarperCollins

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: The Master: A Novel, Colm Tóibín, Scribner

Finalists:

GraceLand, Chris Abani, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Darling, Russell Banks, HarperCollins
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Honored Guest: Stories, Joy Williams, Alfred A. Knopf

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism, Geoffrey R. Stone, W. W. Norton & Company

Finalists:

The Coming of the Third Reich, Richard J. Evans, Penguin Press
High Noon in the Cold War: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, Max Frankel, Presidio Press/Ballantine Books
Beasts of the Field: A Narrative History of California Farmworkers, 1769-1913, Richard Steven Street, Stanford University Press
Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier, Alfred F. Young, Alfred A. Knopf

────────────
MYSTERY/THRILLER
────────────
Winner: Tijuana Straits: A Novel, Kem Nunn, Scribner

Finalists:

Dark Voyage: A Novel, Alan Furst, Random House
The Return of the Dancing Master, Henning Mankell translated by Laurie Thompson, The New Press
Old Boys, Charles McCarry, Overlook Press
A Question of Blood: An Inspector Rebus Novel, Ian Rankin, Little, Brown, and Company

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Inner Voices: Selected Poems, 1963-2003, Richard Howard, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalists:

The Orchard: Poems, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, BOA Editions, Ltd.
The Optimist: Poems, Joshua Mehigan, Ohio University Press
The Clerk’s Tale: Poems, Spencer Reece, Mariner Books / Houghton Mifflin
Keeping My Name, Catherine Tufariello, Texas Tech University Press

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Tony Hillerman

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate Change, Charles Wohlforth, North Point Press / Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalists:

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

────────────────
YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
────────────────
Winner: Doing It, Melvin Burgess, Henry Holt Books for Young Readers

Finalists:

Private Peaceful, Michael Morpurgo, Scholastic Press
Under the Wolf, Under the Dog, Adam Rapp, Candlewick Press
How I Live Now, Meg Rosoff, Wendy Lamb Books / Random House Children’s Books
Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood, Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Cinco Puntos Press

2003

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Mark Haddon, Vintage Contemporaries

Finalists:

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

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

Finalists:

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

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: The New Chinese Empire: And What It Means For The United States, Ross Terrill, Basic Books

Finalists:

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

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: Train, Pete Dexter, Doubleday

Finalists:

Ten Little Indians, Sherman Alexie, Grove Press
Jamesland, Michelle Huneven, Vintage
The Namesake: A Novel, Jhumpa Lahiri, Houghton Mifflin Company
Old School, Tobias Wolff, Alfred A. Knopf

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

Finalists:

Gulag: A History, Anne Applebaum, Doubleday
Homosexuality and Civilization, Louis Crompton, Belknap Press
Wings of Madness: Alberto Santos-Dumont and the Invention of Flight, Paul Hoffman, Grand Central Publishing
They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace Vietnam and America October 1967, David Maraniss, Simon & Schuster
When the King Took Flight, Timothy Tackett, Harvard University Press

────────────
MYSTERY/THRILLER
────────────
Winner: Soul Circus, George P. Pelecanos, Orion

Finalists:

The Company You Keep, Neil Gordon, Viking Adult
The House Sitter, Peter Lovesey, Soho Press
The Dogs of Riga, Henning Mankell, The New Press
Death of a Nationalist, Rebecca Pawel, Soho Press

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Collected Later Poems, Anthony Hecht, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

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

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Ishmael Reed

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

Finalists:

The Beast in the Garden: The True Story of a Predator’s Deadly Return to Suburban America, David Baron, W. W. Norton & Company
The Emperor of Scent: A True Story of Perfume and Obsession, Chandler Burr, Random House
Merchants of Immortality: Chasing the Dream of Human Life Extension, Stephen S. Hall, Houghton Mifflin

────────────────
YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
────────────────
Winner: A Northern Light, Jennifer Donnelly, Harcourt Children’s Books

Finalists:

True Confessions of a Heartless Girl, Martha Brooks, Farrar Straus and Giroux
Olive’s Ocean, Kevin Henkes, Greenwillow Books
The River Between Us, Richard Peck, Dial
After, Francine Prose, HarperCollins

2002

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: Prague, Arthur Phillips, Random House

Finalists:

The Stars Can Wait, Jay Basu, Henry Holt and Company
Everything Is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer, Houghton Mifflin Company
Man Walks into a Room, Nicole Krauss, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday
The Impressionist, Hari Kunzru, Dutton/Penguin Group

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson Vol. 3, Robert A. Caro, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

The Country under My Skin: A Memoir of Love and War, Gioconda Belli translated by Kristina Cordero, Alfred A. Knopf
Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg, Viking
Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War, T. J. Stiles, Alfred A. Knopf
Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, Claire Tomalin, Alfred A. Knopf

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex, Judith Levine, University of Minnesota Press

Finalists:

Seeing in the Dark: How Backyard Stargazers Are Probing Deep Space and Guarding Earth from Interplanetary Peril, Timothy Ferris, Simon & Schuster
The New Killing Fields: Massacre and the Politics of Intervention, Nicolaus Mills, Kira Brunner, Basic Books
Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich, Kevin Phillips, Broadway Books
A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, Samantha Power, Basic Books

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: Atonement, Ian McEwan, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday

Finalists:

The City of Your Final Destination, Peter Cameron, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Nowhere Man, Aleksandar Hemon, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday
Moral Hazard, Kate Jennings, Fourth Estate/HarperCollins
Tourmaline, Joanna Scott, Little, Brown and Company

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, Michael B. Oren, Oxford University Press

Finalists:

At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America, Philip Dray, Random House
The Diligent: A Voyage through the Worlds of the Slave Trade, Robert Harms, Basic Books
Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller, Gregg Herken, A John Macrae Book/Henry Holt
In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692, Mary Beth Norton, Alfred A. Knopf

────────────
MYSTERY/THRILLER
────────────
Winner: Hell to Pay, George P. Pelecanos, Little, Brown and Company

Finalists:

The Emperor of Ocean Park, Stephen L. Carter, Alfred A. Knopf
Living Dead Girl, Tod Goldberg, Soho Press
One Step Behind, Henning Mankell translated by Ebba Segerberg, The New Press
Reversible Errors, Scott Turow, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: The Watercourse: Poems, Cynthia Zarin, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

Hip Logic, Terrance Hayes, Penguin Books
North Point North: New and Selected Poems, John Koethe, HarperCollins Publishers
Hazmat: Poems, J.D. McClatchy, Alfred A. Knopf
Sleeping with the Dictionary, Harryette Mullen, University of California Press

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Larry McMurtry

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, Brenda Maddox, HarperCollins Publishers

Finalists:

Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection, Deborah Blum, Perseus Publishing
Of Moths and Men: An Evolutionary Tale, the Untold Story of Science and the Peppered Moth, Judith Hooper, W. W. Norton & Company
Salt: A World History, Mark Kurlansky, Walker and Company
The Demon in the Freezer: A True Story, Richard Preston, Random House

────────────────
YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
────────────────
Winner: Feed, M. T. Anderson, Candlewick Press

Finalists:

Dillon Dillon, Kate Banks, Frances Foster Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
This Lullaby, Sarah Dessen, Viking/Penguin Young Readers Group
America, E.R. Frank, A Richard Jackson Book/Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Big Mouth & Ugly Girl, Joyce Carol Oates, HarperTempest/HarperCollins

2001

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: The Dark Room: A Novel, Rachel Seiffert, Pantheon Books

Finalists:

My Dream of You, Nuala O’Faolain, Riverhead Books
Crawling at Night: A Novel, Nani Power, Atlantic Monthly Press
The Death of Vishnu: A Novel, Manil Suri, W. W. Norton & Company
The Right Hand of Sleep: A Novel, John Wray, Alfred A. Knopf

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Theodore Rex, Edmund Morris, Random House

Finalists:

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

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Barbara Ehrenreich. Metropolitan Books

Finalists:

States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering, Stanley Cohen, Polity
The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued, Ann Crittenden, Metropolitan Books
The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment That Redefined the Supreme Court, John W. Dean, The Free Press
Tom and Huck Don’t Live Here Anymore: Childhood and Murder in the Heart of America, Ron Powers, St. Martin’s Press

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: Why Did I Ever: A Novel, Mary Robison, Counterpoint Press

Finalists:

The Corrections: A Novel, Jonathan Franzen, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
By the Sea, Abdulrazak Gurnah, The New Press
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories, Alice Munro, Alfred A. Knopf
John Henry Days: A Novel, Colson Whitehead, Doubleday Books

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, Rick Perlstein, Hill & Wang

Finalists:

The Stranger From Paradise: A Biography of William Blake, G.E. Bentley Jr., Yale University Press
France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944, Julian Jackson, Oxford University Press
The Metaphysical Club, Louis Menand, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Venice, Lion City: The Religion of Empire, Garry Wills, Simon & Schuster

────────────
MYSTERY/THRILLER
────────────
Winner: Silent Joe: A Novel, T. Jefferson Parker, Hyperion

Finalists:

Open Season: A Joe Pickett Novel, C.J. Box, G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Little America: A Novel, Henry Bromell, Alfred A. Knopf
The Wooden Leg of Inspector Anders, Marshall Browne, Thomas Dunne Books
Chasing the Devil’s Tale: A Storyville Mystery, David Fulmer, Poisoned Pen Press

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos, Anne Carson, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

Felt Poems, Alice Fulton, W. W. Norton & Company
The Seven Ages, Louise Glück, Ecco
Landscape with Chainsaw: Poems, James Lasdun, W. W. Norton & Company
Song of the World Becoming: New and Collected Poems, 1981-2000, Pattiann Rogers, Milkweed Editions

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Tillie Olsen

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies, Richard Hamblyn, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalists:

In Code: A Mathematical Journey, Sarah Flannery with David Flannery, Workman Publishing Company
A Different Nature: The Paradoxical World of Zoos and Their Uncertain Future, David Hancocks, University of California Press
Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, Oliver Sacks, Alfred A. Knopf
The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry, Bryan Sykes, W. W. Norton & Company

────────────────
YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
────────────────
Winner: The Land, Mildred D. Taylor, Phyllis Fogelman Books

Finalists:

The Seeing Stone, Kevin Crossley-Holland, Arthur A. Levine Books
Damage, A.M. Jenkins, HarperCollins Children’s Books
Girlhearts, Norma Fox Mazer, HarperCollins Children’s Books
The Other Side of Truth, Beverly Naidoo, HarperCollins Children’s Books

2000

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: The Romantics: A Novel, Pankaj Mishra, Random House

Finalists:

The Last Samurai: A Novel, Helen DeWitt, Talk Miramax Books
Sam the Cat and Other Stories, Matthew Klam, Random House
An Obedient Father: A Novel, Akhil Sharma, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
White Teeth: A Novel, Zadie Smith, Random House

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Jefferson Davis, American, William J. Cooper, Jr., Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin, H. W. Brands, Doubleday
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, Joseph J. Ellis, Alfred A. Knopf
Hitler, 1936-1945: Nemesis, Ian Kershaw, W. W. Norton & Company
Mao: A Life, Philip Short, Henry Holt

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan and Star Wars and the End of the Cold War, Frances FitzGerald, Simon & Schuster

Finalists:

The Missionary and the Libertine: Love and War in East and West, Ian Buruma, Random House
The Mysteries Within: A Surgeon Reflects on Medical Myths, Sherwin B. Nuland, Simon & Schuster
Pitching Around Fidel: A Journey Into the Heart of Cuban Sports, S. L. Price, HarperCollins/Ecco Press
Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon, Patrick Tierney, W. W. Norton & Company

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: Assorted Fire Events: Stories, David Means, Context Books

Finalists:

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay: A Novel, Michael Chabon, Random House
Equal Love: Stories, Peter Ho Davies, Houghton Mifflin
The Human Stain, Philip Roth, Houghton Mifflin
The Quick & The Dead, Joy Williams, Alfred A. Knopf

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach, Alice Kaplan, University of Chicago Press

Finalists:

Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra--The Life and Death of an American Woman in Nazi Germany, Shareen Blair Brysac, Oxford University Press
Kosovo: War and Revenge, Tim Judah, Yale University Press
The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, Alexander Keyssar, Basic Books
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, Nathaniel Philbrick, Viking

────────────
MYSTERY/THRILLER
────────────
Winner: A Place of Execution: A Novel, Val McDermid, St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur

Finalists:

Purple Cane Road: A Novel, James Lee Burke, Bantam Books
Blood Rain: An Aurelio Zen Mystery, Michael Dibdin, Pantheon
Shame the Devil: A Novel, George P. Pelecanos, Little, Brown and Company
Cold Is the Grave: A Novel of Suspense, Peter Robinson, HarperCollins/William Morrow

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: The Throne of Labdacus, Gjertrud Schnackenberg, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalists:

Men in the Off Hours, Anne Carson, Alfred A. Knopf
The Ledge: Poems, Michael Collier, Houghton Mifflin
Some Ether, Nick Flynn, Graywolf Press
Pastoral: Poems, Carl Phillips, Graywolf Press

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Lawrence Ferlinghetti

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine, James Le Fanu, Carroll & Graf

Finalists:

E=MC2: A Biography of the World’s Most Famous Equation, David Bodanis, Walker & Co.
Einstein in Love (A Scientific Romance), Dennis Overbye, Viking
Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Matt Ridley, HarperCollins
A Rum Affair: A True Story of Botanical Fraud, Karl Sabbagh, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

────────────────
YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
────────────────
Winner: Miracle’s Boys, Jacqueline Woodson, Penguin Putnam / G. P. Putnam’s Sons

Finalists:

Forgotten Fire, Adam Bagdasarian, DK Ink
Many Stones, Carolyn Coman, Front Street
Esperanza Rising, Pam Munoz Ryan, Scholastic
When Kambia Elaine Flew in From Neptune, Lori Aurelia Williams, Simon & Schuster

1999

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: Amy and Isabelle: A Novel, Elizabeth Strout, Random House

Finalists:

By the Shore: A Novel, Galaxy Craze, Atlantic Monthly Press
For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, Nathan Englander, Alfred A. Knopf
Interpreter of Maladies: Stories, Jhumpa Lahiri, Houghton Mifflin
Last Things: A Novel, Jenny Offill, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette, Judith Thurman, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

My Grandfather’s House: A Genealogy of Doubt and Faith, Robert Clark, Picador USA
Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame, Benita Eisler, Alfred A. Knopf
Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself, Jerome Loving, University of California Press
Rembrandt’s Eyes, Simon Schama, Alfred A. Knopf

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Sidewalk, Mitchell Duneier, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalists:

A Border Passage: From Cairo to America--A Woman’s Journey, Leila Ahmed, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War, Mark Bowden, Atlantic Monthly Press
Chosen by God: Brother’s Journey, Joshua Hammer, Hyperion
An Affair of State: The Investigation, Impeachment and Trial of President Clinton, Richard Posner, Harvard University Press

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: Freedom Song: Three Novels, Amit Chaudhuri, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

House of Sand and Fog, Andre Dubus III, W. W. Norton & Company
Plainsong, Kent Haruf, Alfred A. Knopf
Waiting, Ha Jin, Pantheon
Close Range: Wyoming Stories, Annie Proulx, Scribner

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, John W. Dower, W. W. Norton & Company

Finalists:

Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad, David Haward Bain, Viking
The First World War, John Keegan, Alfred A. Knopf
Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (The Oxford History of the United States, Vol. 9), David M. Kennedy, Oxford University Press
The Holocaust in American Life, Peter Novick, Houghton Mifflin

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Repair: Poems, C.K. Williams, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalists:

The Father of the Predicaments, Heather McHugh, Wesleyan University Press
The Oval Hour, Kathleen Peirce, University of Iowa Press
The Dreamhouse, Tom Sleigh, University of Chicago Press
The Red Leaves of Night, David St. John, HarperCollins

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Ursula K. Le Guin

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love, Dava Sobel, Walker & Co.

Finalists:

Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds, Bernd Heinrich, Cliff Street Books/HarperCollins
The River: A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS, Edward Hooper, Little, Brown, and Company
Lucy’s Legacy: Sex and Intelligence in Human Evolution, Alison Jolly, Harvard University Press
The Code Book: The Evolution of Secrecy From Mary, Queen of Scots to Quantum Cryptography, Simon Singh, Doubleday

────────────────
YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
────────────────
Winner: Frenchtown Summer, Robert Cormier, Delacorte Press

Finalists:

Skellig, David Almond, Delacorte Press
Speak, Laurie Halse, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Monster, Walter Dean Myers, HarperCollins
Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy, Sonya Sones, HarperCollins

1998

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: Kalimantaan, C. S. Goldshalk, Henry Holt

Finalists:

Hunger: A Novella and Stories, Lan Samantha Chang, W. W. Norton & Company
The Undiscovered Country, Samantha Gillison, Grove/Atlantic
A Crowded Heart: A Novel, Nicholas Papandreou, Picador
Blue Bossa, Bart Schneider, Viking

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Lindbergh, A. Scott Berg, G. P. Putnam’s Sons

Finalists:

Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull, Barbara Goldsmith, Alfred A. Knopf
A Traitor’s Kiss: The Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 1751-1816, Fintan O’Toole, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Victor Hugo: A Biography, Graham Robb, W. W. Norton & Company
The Unknown Matisse: A Life of Henri Matisse, the Early Years, 1869-1908, Hilary Spurling, Alfred A. Knopf

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, Philip Gourevitch, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalists:

Cold New World: Growing Up in a Harder Country, William Finnegan, Random House
Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars, Cynthia Gorney, Simon & Schuster
On the Outside Looking In: A Year in an Inner-City High School, Cristina Rathbone, Grove/Atlantic

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: The Rings of Saturn, W.G. Sebald, translated by Michael Hulse, New Directions

Finalists:

Evening, Susan Minot, Alfred A. Knopf
Freedomland, Richard Price, Broadway Books
I Married a Communist, Philip Roth, Houghton Mifflin
Death in Summer, William Trevor, Viking

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity, Roy Porter, W. W. Norton & Company

Finalists:

Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America, Ira Berlin, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry, Philip D. Morgan, University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture, Kathy Peiss, Metropolitan Books
The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life, Nancy Tomes, Harvard University Press

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Mysteries of Small Houses, Alice Notley, Penguin

Finalists:

Without: Poems, Donald Hall, Houghton Mifflin
The Shape of the Journey: New and Collected Poems, Jim Harrison, Copper Canyon Press
The Folding Cliffs: A Narrative, W.S. Merwin, Alfred A. Knopf
American Rush: Selected Poems, Maureen Owen, Talisman House

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: John Sanford

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: Blood: An Epic History of Medicine and Commerce, Douglas Starr, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

The Baltimore Case: A Trial of Politics, Science, and Character, Daniel J. Kevles, W. W. Norton & Company
Mendel’s Dwarf, Simon Mawer, Harmony Books
Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind, V. S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee, William Morrow
Taking Wing: Archaeopteryx and the Evolution of Bird Flight, Pat Shipman, Simon & Schuster

────────────────
YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
────────────────
Winner: Rules of the Road, Joan Bauer, G. P. Putnam’s Sons

Finalists:

Go and Come Back: A Novel, Joan Abelove, DK Ink
In a Dark Wood, Michael Cadnum, Orchard Books
Soldier’s Heart: Being the Story of the Enlistment and Due Service of the Boy Charley Goddard in the First Minnesota Volunteers, Gary Paulsen, Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers
Holes, Louis Sachar, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

1997

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: Don’t Erase Me: Stories, Carolyn Ferrell, Houghton Mifflin

Finalists:

A Crime in the Neighborhood: A Novel, Suzanne Berne, Algonquin
Round Rock: A Novel, Michelle Huneven, Alfred A. Knopf
A Child Out of Alcatraz, Tara Ison, Faber and Faber
The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy, Random House

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Whittaker Chambers: A Biography, Sam Tanenhaus, Random House

Finalists:

Nazimova: A Biography, Gavin Lambert, Alfred A. Knopf
Burning the Days: Recollection, James Salter, Random House
Napoleon Bonaparte: A Life, Alan Schom, HarperCollins
Bogart, Ann M. Sperber and Eric Lax, William Morrow

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures, Anne Fadiman, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalists:

The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture, Daniel Harris, Hyperion
Race, Crime, and the Law, Randall Kennedy, Pantheon Books
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster, Jon Krakauer, Villard
Our Guys: The Glen Ridge Rape and the Secret Life of the Perfect Suburb, Bernard Lefkowitz, University of California Press

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: In the Rogue Blood, James Carlos Blake, Avon Books

Finalists:

Reading In the Dark, Seamus Deane, Alfred A. Knopf
The Ordinary Seaman, Francisco Goldman, Atlantic Monthly Press
California’s Over, Louis B. Jones, Pantheon Books
The Reader, Bernhard Schlink, Pantheon Books

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: A People’s Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution, 1891-1924, Orlando Figes, Viking

Finalists:

Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume One: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939, Saul Friedlander, HarperCollins
Sun Dancing: A Vision of Medieval Ireland, Geoffrey Moorhouse, Harcourt Brace
Echoes of a Native Land: Two Centuries of a Russian Village, Serge Schmemann, Alfred A. Knopf
Fat History: Bodies and Beauty In the Modern West, Peter N. Stearns, New York University Press

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Black Zodiac, Charles Wright, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalists:

Resurrection Update: Collected Poems, 1975-1997, James Galvin, Copper Canyon Press
An Octave Above Thunder: New and Selected Poems, Carol Muske, Penguin Books
Natal Command, Peter M. Sacks, Edited by Alan Shapiro, University of Chicago Press
The Four Questions of Melancholy: New and Selected Poems, Tomaz Salumun, Edited by Christopher Merrill, White Pine Press

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Ray Bradbury

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: How the Mind Works, Steven Pinker, W. W. Norton & Company

Finalists:

The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes--and Its Implications, David Deutsch, Allen Lane
Venus Revealed: A New Look Below the Clouds of Our Mysterious Twin Planet, David H. Grinspoon, Addison-Wesley
Deadly Feasts: Tracking the Secrets of a Terrifying New Plague, Richard Rhodes, Simon & Schuster
The Trouble with Testosterone: And Other Essays on the Biology of the Human Predicament, Robert M. Sapolsky, Scribner

1996

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: The Smell of Apples, Mark Behr, St. Martin’s Press

Finalists:

St. Burl’s Obituary, Daniel Akst, MacMurray & Beck
The Secret of the Bulls, Jose Raul Bernardo, Simon & Schuster
I Never Came to You in White, Judith Farr, Houghton Mifflin
The Debt to Pleasure, John Lanchester, Henry Holt and Co.
Resurrection Man, Eoin McNamee, Picador
I Was Amelia Earhart, Jane Mendelsohn, Alfred A. Knopf
The Veracruz Blues, Mark Winegardner, Viking

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt, Scribner

Finalists:

Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu, Simon Callow, Viking
Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams, Lyle Leverich, Crown
Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography, Gail Levin, Alfred A. Knopf
William Morris: A Life for Our Time, Fiona MacCarthy, Alfred A. Knopf
Hellman and Hammett: The Legendary Passion of Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett, Joan Mellen, HarperCollins
An Uncommon Woman: The Empress Frederick, Daughter of Queen Victoria, Wife of the Crown Prince of Prussia, Mother of Kaiser Wilhelm, Hannah Pakula, Simon & Schuster
A Life of Picasso: 1907-1917, the Painter of Modern Life, John Richardson, Random House

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War, Peter Maass, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

All God’s Children: The Basket Family and the American Tradition of Violence, Fox Butterfield, Alfred A. Knopf
A Civil Action, Jonathan Harr, Random House
Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs and Declarations of Independence, John Hockenberry, Hyperion
Ashes to Ashes: America’s Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris, Richard Kluger, Alfred A. Knopf
Turning Stones: My Days and Nights With Children at Risk, Marc Parent, Harcourt Brace
The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions, David Quammen, Scribner
The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA, Evan Thomas, Simon & Schuster

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

Every Man for Himself, Beryl Bainbridge, Carroll & Graf
The Ghost Road, Pat Barker, Dutton
Ship Fever and Other Stories, Andrea Barrett, W. W. Norton & Company
About Schmidt, Louis Begley, Alfred A. Knopf
Tree of Heaven, R.C. Binstock, Soho Press
Santa Evita, Tomas Eloy Martinez, Alfred A. Knopf
Open Heart, A.B. Yehoshua, Doubleday

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: Black Sea, Neal Ascherson, Hill & Wang

Finalists:

Europe: A History, Norman Davies, Oxford University Press
War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage, Lawrence H. Keeley, Oxford University Press
Ashes to Ashes: America’s Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris, Richard Kluger, Alfred A. Knopf
Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California, Kevin Starr, Oxford University Press
William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic, Alan Taylor, Alfred A. Knopf

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Mixed Company, Alan Shapiro, The University of Chicago Press

Finalists:

The Terrible Stories, Lucille Clifton, BOA Editions Limited
Meadowlands, Louise Glück, Ecco
The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems, 1974-1994, Jorie Graham, Ecco
Things That Happen Once, Rodney Jones, Houghton Mifflin
Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected, Stanley Kunitz, W. W. Norton & Company
The World at Large: New and Selected Poems, 1971-1996, James McMichael, The University of Chicago Press
The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems, 1966-1996, Robert Pinsky, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Wise Poison, David Rivard, Graywolf Press

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Gary Snyder

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Carl Sagan, Random House

Finalists:

Fermat’s Last Theorem: Unlocking the Secret of an Ancient Mathematical Problem, Amir D. Aczel, Four Walls Eight Windows
The Most Beautiful Molecule: The Discovery of the Buckyball, Hugh Aldersey-Williams, John Wiley & Sons Inc.
The Forgotten Pollinators, Stephen L. Buchmann and Gary Paul Nabhan, Island Press/Shearwater
Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith and the Search for Order, George Johnson, Alfred A. Knopf
Home From Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the Twenty-First Century, James Howard Kunstler, Simon & Schuster
The Dying of the Trees: The Pandemic in America’s Forests, Charles Little, Viking

1995

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: American Studies, Mark Merlis, Houghton Mifflin

Finalists:

The Point, Charles D’Ambrosio, Little, Brown and Company
Looking Through Glass, Mukul Kesavan, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
A Stone Boat, Andrew Solomon, Faber & Faber
The Good Negress, A. J. Verdelle, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949, Doris Lessing, HarperCollins

Finalists:

D.H. Lawrence: The Story of a Marriage, Brenda Maddox, Simon & Schuster
Marie Curie: A Life, Susan Quinn, Simon & Schuster
Drinking the Rain, Alix Kates Shulman, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
In Pharoah’s Army: Memories of the Lost War, Tobias Wolff, Alfred A. Knopf

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black, Gregory Howard Williams, Dutton

Finalists:

Blue Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots, Nancy Abelmann and John Lie, Harvard University Press
We, the Jury: The Jury System and the Ideal of a Democracy, Jeffrey Abramson, Basic Books
Growing Up with a Single Parent, Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, Harvard University Press
Beyond Individualism: How Social Demands of the New Identity Groups Challenge American Political and Economic Life, Michael J. Piore, Harvard University Press

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: The Blue Afternoon, William Boyd, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

Albion’s Story, Kate Grenville, Harcourt Brace
Trinity Fields, Bradford Morrow, Viking
Open Secrets, Alice Munro, Alfred A. Knopf
Felicia’s Journey, William Trevor, Viking

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America, Jackson Lears, Basic Books

Finalists:

Speak Now against The Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South, John Egerton, Alfred A. Knopf
Rewriting the Soul, Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory, Ian Hacking, Princeton University Press
Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956, David Holloway, Yale University Press
Marketing Modernism in Fin de Siecle Europe, Robert Jensen, Princeton University Press

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: The Inferno of Dante, Robert Pinsky, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalists:

Song, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, BOA Editions Limited
Split Horizon, Thomas Lux, Houghton Mifflin
City of Salt, Gregory Orr, University of Pittsburgh Press
New and Selected Poems, Gary Soto, Chronicle

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Stephen J. Pyne

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: Naturalist, Edward O. Wilson, Island Press

Finalists:

The Alchemy of the Heavens: Searching for Meaning in the Milky Way, Ken Croswell, Anchor Books
Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reasons, and the Human Brain, Antonio Damasio, G.P. Putnam’s Sons
An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales, Oliver Sacks, Alfred A. Knopf
The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life, Robert Wright, Pantheon

1994

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: The Year of The Frog, Martin M. Simecka, translated by Peter Petro, Louisiana State University Press

Finalists:

The Indian Chronicles, Jose Barreiro, Arte Publico Press/University of Houston
A Place Where The Sea Remembers, Sandra Benitez, Coffee House Press
On Love, Alain de Botton, Atlantic Monthly Press
In Search of Bernabe, Graciela Limon, Arte Publico Press/University of Houston

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Shot in The Heart, Mikal Gilmore, Doubleday

Finalists:

Rodin: The Shape of Genius, Ruth Butler, Yale University Press
Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge, Gerald Gunther, Alfred A. Knopf
Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life, Joan D. Hedrick, Oxford University Press
An Evil Cradling: The Five-Year Ordeal of a Hostage, Brian Keenan, Viking

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Diplomacy, Henry Kissinger, Simon & Schuster

Finalists:

Original Intent and The Framers of The Constitution: A Disputed Question, Harry V. Jaffa, Regnery/Gateway
The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism on Campus, Katherine Roiphe, Little, Brown and Company
Parallel Time, Brent Staples, Pantheon Books
The Moral Sense, James Q. Wilson, The Free Press

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: Remembering Babylon, David Malouf, Pantheon Books

Finalists:

While England Sleeps, David Leavitt, Viking
The Holder of The World, Bharati Mukherjee, Alfred A. Knopf
The Soloist, Mark Salzman, Random House
The Rifles, William T. Vollmann, Viking

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940, George Chauncey, Basic Books

Finalists:

Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years, Elizabeth Barber, W. W. Norton & Company
Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe, John Boswell, Villard Books
Antisemitism in America, Leonard Dinnerstein, Oxford University Press
Becoming Mexican-American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles 1900-1945, George J. Sanchez, Oxford University Press

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: The Angel of History, Carolyn Forche, HarperCollins

Finalists:

The Blood of The Poet, William Everson, Broken Moon Press
Materialism, Jorie Graham, Ecco
Lost Country, Dan Howell, University of Massachusetts Press
Bag O’ Diamonds, Susan Wheeler, University of Georgia Press

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Brian Moore

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: The Beak of The Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time, Jonathan Weiner, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

Uncommon Sense: The Heretical Nature of Science, Alan Cromer, Oxford University Press
Signs of Life: Language and the Meaning of DNA, Robert Pollack, Houghton Mifflin
Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: A Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Disease, and Coping, Robert M. Sapolsky, W. H. Freeman
The End of Evolution: On Mass Extinctions and the Preservation of Biological Diversity, Peter Douglas Ward, Bantam Books

1993

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: Love: Enter, Paul Kafka-Gibbons, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Finalists:

Come to Me: Stories, Amy Bloom, HarperCollins
Mother Rocket, Rita Ciresi, University of Georgia Press
Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel, Doubleday
Mourning Doves: Stories, Judy Troy, Charles Scribner’s Sons

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer, John Mack Faragher, Henry Holt

Finalists:

Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life, Joseph Brent, Indiana University Press
The Wives of Henry VIII, Antonia Fraser, Alfred A. Knopf
Lincoln: An Illustrated Biography, Philip B. Kunhardt Jr., Philip B. Kunhardt III, and Peter W. Kunhardt, Alfred A. Knopf
Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, the Man Behind the Bomb, William Lanouette, Charles Scribner’s Sons

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Mexican Americans: The Ambivalent Minority, Peter Skerry, Free Press/Macmillan

Finalists:

The Real Anita Hill, David Brock, Free Press/Macmillan
Preparing for the Twenty-First Century, Paul Kennedy, Random House
African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe, Doris Lessing, HarperCollins
Conduct Unbecoming: Lesbians and Gays in the U.S. Military, Vietnam to the Persian Gulf, Randy Shilts, St. Martin’s Press

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: Pigs in Heaven, Barbara Kingsolver, HarperCollins

Finalists:

For Love, Sue Miller, HarperCollins
The Burning Glass, Helen Norris, The Louisiana State University Press
Rameau’s NieceRameau’s Niece, Cathleen Schine, Ticknor & Fields/Houghton Mifflin
Collected Stories, William Trevor, Viking Adult

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery, Anthony Grafton, Harvard University Press/Belknap Press

Finalists:

The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity, James C. Cobb, Oxford University Press
Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992, Jane Hamilton-Merritt, Indiana University Press
Rising in the West: The True Story of an “Okie” Family From the Great Depression Through the Reagan Years, Dan Morgan, Alfred A. Knopf
The Immobile Empire, Alain Peyrefitte, Alfred A. Knopf

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: My Alexandria, Mark Doty, University of Illinois Press

Finalists:

Afterworld, Christine Garren, University of Chicago Press
Legends from Camp, Lawson Fusao Inada, Coffee House Press
Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems, Yusef Komunyakaa, University Press of New England/Wesleyan University Press
Hotel Insomnia, Charles Simic, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Carolyn Penelope See

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: Fuzzy Logic: The Revolutionary Computer Technology That Is Changing Our World, Daniel McNeill and Paul Freiberger, Simon & Schuster

Finalists:

AI: The Tumultuous History of the Search for Artificial Intelligence, Daniel Crevier, BasicBooks/HarperCollins
Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, James Gleick, Pantheon Books
Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion, Gary Taubes, Random House
The Diversity of Life, Edward O. Wilson, Harvard University Press/Belknap Press

1992

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: High Cotton, Darryl Pinckney, Picador

Finalists:

1959, Thulani Davis, Grove Press
She’s Come Undone, Wally Lamb, Simon & Schuster
After Moondog, Jane Shapiro, Grand Central Publishing
Marine Life, Linda Svendsen, Farrar Straus and Giroux

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 1: The Early Years, 1884-1933, Blanche Wiesen Cook, Penguin

Finalists:

A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story, William Martin, William Morrow & Co.
Salem Is My Dwelling Place: Life Of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edwin Haviland Miller, University Of Iowa Press
Fascinating Rhythm: The Collaboration of George and Ira Gershwin, Deena Rosenberg, University of Michigan Press
Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance, Kenneth Silverman, HarperCollins

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama, Free Press

Finalists:

Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics, Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall, W. W. Norton & Company
Culture Wars: The Struggle To Control The Family, Art, Education, Law, And Politics In America, James Davison Hunter, Basic Books
The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto, Pico Iyer, Vintage Departures
Den of Thieves, James B. Stewart, Simon & Schuster

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began, Art Spiegelman, Pantheon Books

Finalists:

Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, Randall Kenan, Harcourt
Daughters, Paule Marshall, Atheneum
Time and Tide, Edna O’Brien, Farrar Straus and Giroux
A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley, Alfred A. Knopf

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism, Alexander Stille, Penguin Books

Finalists:

The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair’s Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics, Greg Mitchell, Random House
Frontiers: The Epic of South Africa’s Creation and the Tragedy of the Xhosa People, Noel Mostert, Alfred A. Knopf
Owen Lattimore and the “Loss” of China, Robert P. Newman, University of California Press
Triumphs and Tragedy: A History of the Mexican People, Ramon Eduardo Ruiz, W. W. Norton & Company

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991, Adrienne Rich, W. W. Norton & Company

Finalists:

The Wild Iris, Louise Glück, Ecco
The Father, Sharon Olds, Alfred A. Knopf
Bread Without Sugar: Poems, Gerald Stern, W. W. Norton & Company

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Diane Johnson

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal, Jared Diamond, Harper Perennial

Finalists:

The Left-Hander Syndrome: The Causes & Consequences of Left-Handedness, Stanley Coren, Vintage
Consciousness Explained, Daniel C. Dennett, Back Bay Books
Blinded By The Light: New Theories About the Sun and the Search for Dark Matter, John Gribbin, Harmony Books
Artificial Life: A Report from the Frontier Where Computers Meet Biology, Steven Levy, Vintage Books

1991

──────────────────────────
ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
──────────────────────────
Art Seidenbaum was the founder of the Book Prizes. At The Times from 1962 until his death in 1990, Seidenbaum was successively a columnist, book editor and opinion editor. The award recognizing debut works of fiction was established in his honor in 1991.

Winner: Pangs of Love, David Wong Louie, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

Wartime Lies, Louis Begley, Alfred A. Knopf
Ten Seconds, Louis Edwards, Graywolf Press
How to Make an American Quilt, Whitney Otto, Villard/Random
The Book of Saints, Nico Ricci, Alfred A. Knopf

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of Harold L. Ickes, 1874-1952, T.H. Watkins, Henry Holt

Finalists:

O’Keefe & Stieglitz An American Romance, Benita Eisler, Doubleday
Road Song: A Memoir, Natalie Kusz, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor, Willard Sterne Randall, William Morrow
A Life of Picasso, Volume I: 1881-1906, John Richardson, Random House

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Why Americans Hate Politics: The Death of the Democratic Process, E.J. Dionne Jr., Simon & Schuster

Finalists:

The United States of Ambition, Alan Ehrenhalt, Times Books
The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America, Nicholas Lemann, Alfred A. Knopf
The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America, Shelby Steele, St. Martin’s Press
The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power, Daniel Yergin, Simon & Schuster

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: White People, Allan Gurganis, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

Woman Hollering Creek, Sandra Cisneros, Random House
Age of Iron, J. W. Coetzee, Random House
A Woman’s Story, Annie Ernaux, Four Walls Eight Windows
The Acacia, Claude Simon, Pantheon Books

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: The Promise Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America, Nicholas Lehman, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

Behind the Mask of Innocence: Films of Social Conscience in the Silent Era, Kevin Brownlow, Alfred A. Knopf
Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768, Philip A. Kuhn, Harvard Univeristy Press
Stalin in Power: The Revolution From Above, 1928-1941, Robert Tucker, W.W. Norton
The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power, Daniel Yergin, Simon & Schuster

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: What Works Is, Phillip Levine, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

Sudden Dreams: New and Selected Poems, George Evans, Coffee House Press
Region of Unlikeness, Jorie Graham, Ecco Press
Star Ledger: Poems, Lynda Hull, University of Iowa Press
The World of the Ten Thousand Things: Poems 1980-1990, Charles Wright, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Ken Kesey

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: The Truth About Chernobyl, Grigori Medvedev, Basic Books

Finalists:

The Ascent of the Mind: Ice Age Climates and the Evolution of Intelligence, William H. Calvin, Bantam Books
The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan, Robert Kanigel, Charles Scribner’s Sons
Walking with the Great Apes, Sy Montgomery, Houghton Mifflin
Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos: The Scientific Quest for the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America in 1921 Secret of the Universe, Dennis Overbye, HarperCollins

1990

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: A First Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt, Geoffrey C. Ward, Harper & Row

Finalists:

Simone De Beauvoir: A Biography, Deirdre Bair, Summit Books
Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Robert A. Caro, Alfred A. Knopf
The Five of Hearts: An Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends, 1880-1918, Patricia O’Toole, Clarkson N. Potter/Crown
The Iron Lady: A Biography of Margaret Thatcher, Hugo Young, Farrar Straus and Giroux

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Disappearing Through The Skylight, O. B. Hardison, Jr., Viking

Finalists:

The Long Gray Line, Rick Atkinson, Houghton Mifflin
Disturbing The Peace, Vaclav Havel, Alfred A. Knopf
My Traitor’s Heart, Rian Malan, The Atlantic Monthly Press
The Politics of Rich and Poor, Kevin Phillips, Random House

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: Lantern Slides, Edna O’Brien, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalists:

Baotown, Wang Anyi, translated by Martha Avery, W. W. Norton & Company
Reaching Tin River, Thea Astley, G. P. Putnam’s Sons
Friend of My Youth, Alice Munro, Alfred A. Knopf
Ordinary Love & Good Will, Jane Smiley, Alfred A. Knopf

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: The Quest for El Cid, Richard Fletcher, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

Awash in A Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People, Jon Butler, Harvard University Press
A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East, 1914-1922, David Fromkin, Henry Holt
Italy and its Monarchy, Denis Mack Smith, Yale University Press
The Search for Modern China, Jonathan D. Spence, W. W. Norton & Company

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: The Color of Mesabi Bones, John Caddy, Milkweed Editions

Finalists:

Grace Notes, Rita Dove, W. W. Norton & Company
What Light There Is, Eamon Grennan, North Point Press
Going Back to The River, Marilyn Hacker, Vintage
Leaving Another Kingdom, Gerald Stern, Harper & Row

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Czeslaw Milosz

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine, Jane S. Smith, William Morrow

Finalists:

Sonoran Desert Summer, John Alcock, University of Arizona Press
Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization, Christopher Manes, Little, Brown and Company
The Control of Nature, John McPhee, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Discovering: Inventing and Solving Problems at the Frontiers of Scientific Knowledge, Robert Scott Root-Bernstein, Harvard University Press

1989

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: This Boy’s Life, Tobias Wolff, Atlantic Monthly Press

Finalists:

Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963, Taylor Branch, Simon & Schuster
Paul Robeson: A Biography, Martin Bauml Duberman, Alfred A. Knopf
George Bernard Shaw: The Search for Love, Michael Holroyd, Random House
First Loves, First Guides, Reynolds Price, Atheneum

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: The Great Plains, Ian Frazier, Farrar, Straus and Giorux

Finalists:

Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963, Taylor Branch, Simon & Schuster
From Beirut to Jerusalem, Thomas Friedman, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Enigma of Japanese Power, Karel von Wolferen, Alfred A. Knopf
The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier, Amy Wilentz, Simon & Schuster

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: The Heart of the Country, Fay Weldon, Viking Penguin

Finalists:

Mother’s Girl, Elaine Feinstein, Hutchinson
The City of Marvels, Eduardo Mendoza, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Midnight Sweets, Bette Pesetsky, Thorndike Press
The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan, Putnam Adult

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, Neal Gabler, Crown Books

Finalists:

Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963, Taylor Branch, Simon & Schuster
Highbrow / Lowbrow The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America, Lawrence W. Levine, Harvard University Press
A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and American in Vietnam, Neil Sheehan, Random House
The Question of Hu, Jonathan Spence, Alfred A. Knopf

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: The One Day: A Poem in Three Parts, Donald Hall, Ticknor & Fields/Houghton Mifflin

Finalists:

A Soldier’s Time, R. L. Barth, John Daniel
Streamers, Sandra McPherson, Ecco
The Wonder of Seeing Double, Robert B. Shaw, University of Massachusetts Press
Sarah’s Choice, Elanor Wilner, Phoenix Poets/ University of Chicago Press

──────────────
ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD
──────────────
The Robert Kirsch Award recognizes the body of work of a living author who resides in and/or whose work focuses on the West and whose contributions to American letters deserve special recognition.

Winner: Karl Shapiro

──────────────
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
──────────────
Winner: Peacemaking Among Primates, Frans de Waal, Harvard University Press

Finalists:

What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery, Francis Crick, Basic Books
The Five Senses, F. Gonzalez-Crussi, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Science As A Process: An Evolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual Development of Science, David Hall, University of Chicago Press
Is Science Necessary? Essays on Science & Scientists, Max F. Perutz, Dutton

1988

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Nora: The Real Life of Molly Bloom, Brenda Maddox, Houghton Mifflin

Finalists:

Freud: A Life for Our Times, Peter Gay, W. W. Norton & Company
Rebecca West: This Is What Matters, Victoria Glendinning, Alfred A. Knopf
Rodin: A Biography, Frederic V. Grunfeld, Henry Holt
Timebends: A Life, Arthur Miller, Grove Press

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country, William Greider, Simon & Schuster

Finalists:

Chaos: Making a New Science, James Gleick, Viking
The Yellow Wind, David Grossman, translated by Haim Watzman, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America, Jonathon Kozol, Crown Publishers
And The Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, Randy Shilts, St. Martin’s Press

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez, translated by Edith Grossman, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

Showdown, Jorge Amado, translated by Gregory Rabassa, Bantam Books
Libra, Don DeLillo, Viking
The Fifth Child, Doris Lessing, Alfred A. Knopf
Moon Tiger, Penelope Lively, Grove Press

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, Eric Foner, Harper & Row

Finalists:

Heroes Of Their Own Lives The Politics and History of Family Violence, Boston, 1880-1960, Linda Gordon, Viking
The Age Of Empire, 1875-1914, Eric Hobsbawm, Pantheon Books
The Issei: The World of the First-Generation Japanese Immigrants, 1885-1924, Yuji Ichioka, The Free Press/Macmillan
Nuclear Fear: A History of Images, Spencer R. Weart, Harvard University Press

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: New and Collected Poems, Richard Wilbur, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Finalists:

Selected Poems, 1938-1988, Thomas McGrath, Copper Canyon Press
American Odalisque, Jane Miller, Copper Canyon Press
The Imperfect Paradise, Linda Pastan, W. W. Norton & Company
New and Selected Poems, 1940-1986, Karl Shapiro, University of Chicago Press

1987

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Hemingway, Kenneth S. Lynn, Simon & Schuster

Finalists:

ENIGMA: The Life of Knut Hamsun, Robert Ferguson, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
The Man and His Art, 1869-1918, Jack Flam, Cornell University Press
BEARING THE CROSS: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, David J. Garrow, William Morrow & Co.
The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Simon & Schuster

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins, W. W. Norton & Company

Finalists:

The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom, Simon & Schuster
The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin, Viking
Mortal Splendor: The American Empire in Transition, Walter Russell Mead, Houghton Mifflin
Letters From Prison and Other Essays, Adam Michnik, University of California Press

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: Fools Crow, James Welch, Viking

Finalists:

Of Love and Shadows, Isabel Allende, Alfred A. Knopf
That Night, Alice McDermott, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
You Must Remember This, Joyce Carol Oates, E.P. Dutton
A Summons to Memphis, Peter Taylor, Alfred A. Knopf

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, Robert Jay Lifton, Basic Books

Finalists:

The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846-1878, Robert V. Bruce, Alfred A. Knopf
The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine, Robert Conquest, Oxford University Press
The Great Chinese Revolution 1800-1985, John King Fairbank, Perennial Library/Harper & Row
The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia’s Founding, Robert Hughes, Alfred A. Knopf

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Partial Accounts: New and Selected Poems, William Meredith, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

Selected Poems, Tony Harrison, Random House
The Gold Cell Poems, Sharon Olds, Alfred A. Knop
Selected Poems 1957-1987, W.D. Snodgrass, Soho Press
The Rings of Saturn, Diane Wakoski, Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press

1986

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Alexander Pope: A Life, Maynard Mack, W. W. Norton & Company

Finalists:

All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes, Maya Angelou, Vintage
Flame Into Being: The Life and Work of D.H. Lawrence, Anthony Burgess, Arbor House
Henry James: A Life, Leon Edel, Harper & Row
Rain or Shine, A Family Memoir, Cyra McFadden, Alfred A. Knopf
The Stones Cry Out: A Cambodian Childhood, 1975-1980, Molyda Szymusiak, Hill & Wang

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White, Joseph Lelyveld, Times Books

Finalists:

The Political Life of Children, Robert Coles, Atlantic Monthly
Arctic Dreams, Barry Lopez, Scribner
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, Neil Postman, Viking
Home: A Short History of an Idea, Witold Rybczynski, Viking
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks, Summit Press

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood, Houghton Mifflin

Finalists:

The Old Gringo, Carlos Fuentes, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Lake Wobegon Days, Garrison Keillor, Viking
The Perfect Spy, John le Carré, Alfred A. Knopf
The Golden Gate: A Novel in Verse, Vikram Seth, Vintage International
The Accidental Tourist, Anne Tyler, Alfred A. Knopf

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: The First Socialist Society: A History of the Soviet Union from Within, Geoffrey Hosking, Harvard University Press

Finalists:

Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings, translated by Dennis Tedlock, Simon & Schuster
The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud, Volume Two, The Tender Passion, Peter Gay, Oxford University Press
The First Liberty: Religion and the American Republic, William Lee Miller, Alfred A. Knopf
The Siege: The Saga of Israel and Zionism, Conor Cruise O’Brien, Simon & Schuster
The Mountain of Names: A History of the Human Family, Alex Schoumatoff, Simon & Schuster

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Collected Poems, 1948-1984, Derek Walcott, Farrar Straus and Giroux

Finalists:

Selected Poems, John Ashbery, Viking
Selected Poems, Robert Bly, Harper & Row
This Is Not a Letter and Other Poems, Kay Boyle, Sun & Moon Press
Where the Water Comes Together With Other Water, Raymond Carver, Vintage/Random House
Collected Poems 1928-1985, Stephen Spender, Random House

1985

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Solzhenitsyn: A Biography, Michael Scammell, W. W. Norton & Company

Finalists:

Home Before Dark, Susan Cheever, Houghton Mifflin
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, Richard P. Feynman, W. W. Norton & Company
The Periodic Table, Primo Levi, Schocken Books
The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton, Micheal Mott, Houghton Mifflin

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Habits of the Heart, Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler and Steven M. Tipton, University of California

Finalists:

Fire From the Mountain, Omar Cabezas, Crown Publishing Group
Waiting: The Whites of South Africa, Vincent Crapanzano, Random House
Ordinary Vices, Judith N. Shklar, Harvard/Belknap
Marxism: Philosophy and Economics, Thomas Sowell, William Morrow

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich, Holt, Rinehart & Winston

Finalists:

Empire of the Sun, J.G. Ballard, Simon & Schuster
Slow Dancing, Elizabeth Benedict, Alfred A. Knopf
Hotel du Lac, Anita Brookner, Pantheon
Annie John, Jamaica Kincaid, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: Son of the Morning Star, Evan S. Connell, Harper & Row

Finalists:

No Magic Bullet, A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States Since 1880, Allan M. Brandt, Oxford University
Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement, James Framer, Arbor House
One Earth, Four or Five Worlds, Reflections on Contemporary History, Octavio Paz, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Inventing the Dream, California Through the Progressive Era, Kevin Starr, Oxford University Press

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Cross Ties, Selected Poems, X.J. Kennedy, University of Georgia Press

Finalists:

Collected Poems, 1947-1980, Allen Ginsberg, Harper & Row
Station Island, Seamus Heaney, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Humble Administrator’s Garden, Vikram Seth, Carcanet Press
New and Selected Poems, 1923-1985, Robert Penn Warren, Random House

1984

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: The Nightmare of Reason, Ernst Pawel, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalists:

Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850-1859, Joseph Frank, Princeton University Press
Dashiell Hammett: A Life, Diane Johnson, Random House
The Nightmare Years, 1930-1940, William L. Shirer, Little, Brown, and Company
One Writer’s Beginnings, Eudora Welty, Harvard University Press

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Cities and the Wealth of Nations, Jane Jacobs, Random House

Finalists:

In Exile From the Land of Snows, John F. Avedon, Alfred A. Knopf
Weapons and Hope, Freeman Dyson, Bessie/Harper & Row
Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Generation, Myra MacPherson, Doubleday
In the Freud Archives, Janet Malcom, Alfred A. Knopf

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera, translated by Michael Henry Heim, Harper & Row

Finalists:

Him With His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories, Saul Bellow, Harper & Row
Democracy, Joan Didion, Simon & Schuster
Stones for Ibarra, Harriet Doerr, Viking
The Witches of Eastwick, John Updike, Alfred A. Knopf

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History, Robert Darnton, Basic Books

Finalists:

The Discoverers, Daniel J. Boorstin, Random House
The Bourgeois Experience: Education of the Senses, Peter Gay, Oxford University Press
The Rise of Industrial America: A People’s History of the Post-Reconstruction Era, Page Smith, McGraw-Hill
The March of Folly, Barbara Tuchman, Alfred A. Knopf

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: The Maximus Poems, Charles Olson, University of California

Finalists:

A Wave, John Ashbery, Viking
Aime Cesaire: The Collected Poetry, translated by Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith, University of California
Willingly, Tess Gallagher, Graywolf Press
Sweeney Astray: A Version From the Irish, Seamus Heaney, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Selected Poems, Philip Levine, Antheneum

1983

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House, Seymour M. Hersh, Summit Books

Finalists:

Growing Up, Russell Baker, Congdon & Weed
Robert Lowell: A Biography, lan Hamilton, Random House
The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill; Visions of Glory, 1874-193, William Manchester, Little, Brown and Company
Camus, Patrick McCarthy, Random House

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book, Walker Percy, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalists:

Freud and Man’s Soul, Bruno Bettelheim, Alfred A. Knopf
Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation, Sissela Bok, Pantheon
The Nuclear Delusion: Soviet-American Relations in the Atomic Age, George Kennan, Pantheon
Blue Highways: A Journey Into America, William Least Heat Moon, Little, Brown and Company

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: Schindler’s List, Thomas Keneally, Simon & Schuster

Finalists:

The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco, HarperVia
The Little Drummer Girl, John le Carré, Alfred A. Knopf
Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Alfred A. Knopf
The Philosopher’s Pupil, Iris Murdoch, Viking Adult

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: The Wheels of Commerce, Fernand Braudel, Harper & Row

Finalists:

Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties, Noel Riley Fitch, W. W. Norton & Company
Exiled in Paradise: German Refugee Artists and Intellectuals in America From the 1930s to the Present, Anthony Heilbut, Viking
The Social Transformation of American Medicine, Paul Starr, Basic Books
Man and the Natural World, Keith Thomas, Pantheon

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: The Changing Light at Sandover, James Merrill, Scribner

Finalists:

The Kingfisher, Amy Clampitt, Alfred A. Knopf
COLLECTED POEMS, 1945-1975, Robert Creeley, University of California Press
Opening the Hand, W.S. Merwin, Atheneum
The Plain of Smokes, Harvey Mudd, Black Sparrow

1982

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Waldo Emerson: A Biography, Gay Wilson Allen, Viking

Finalists:

W.H. Auden: A Biography, Humphrey Carpenter, Houghton Mifflin
William Carlos Williams: A New World Naked, Paul Mariani, McGraw Hill
Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, and Autobiography, Richard Rodriguez, David R. Godine
Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Yale University

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: The Fate of the Earth, Jonathan Schell, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

Living by Fiction, Annie Dillard, Harper & Row
Sleep and Dreams: Experiments in Literary Psychology, Leon Edel, Harper & Row
At Large, Ellen Goodman, Summit Books
Indecent Exposure: A True Story of Hollywood and Wall Street, David McClintick, William Morrow & Co.

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: A Flag for Sunrise, Robert Stone, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

Sixty Stories, Donald Barthelme, G. P. Putnam’s Sons
The Dean’s December, Saul Bellow, Harper & Row
The Collected Stories, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Anne Tyler, Alfred A. Knopf

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution, 1895–1980, Jonathan D. Spence, Viking

Finalists:

The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible, Fernand Braudel, Harper & Row
The Vineyard of Liberty, James MacGregor Burns, Alfred A. Knopf
The Germans, Gordon A. Craig, G. P. Putnam’s Sons
Vichy France and the Jews, Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Basic Books
Practicing History: Selected Essays, Barbara W. Tuchman, Alfred A. Knopf

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Plutonian Ode and Other Poems, Allen Ginsberg, City Lights Publishers

Finalists:

The Tenderness of the Wolves, Dennis Cooper, The Crossing Press
The Country Between Us, Carolyn Forche, Harper & Row
A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far, Adrienne Rich, W.W. Norton & Company
Rumor Verified, Robert Penn Warren, Random House

1981

───────
BIOGRAPHY
───────
Winner: Mornings on Horseback, David McCullough, Simon & Schuster

Finalists:

George Orwell: A Life, Bernard Crick, Little, Brown and Company
Bertolt Brecht in America, James K. Lyon, Princeton University
Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart, Robert Bernard Martin, Oxford University Press
Alice James: A Biography, Jean Strouse, Houghton Mifflin

───────────
CURRENT INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number, Jacob Timerman, Alfred A. Knopf

Finalists:

The View From Eighty, Malcolm Cowley, Viking
Sand Rivers, Peter Matthiessen, Viking
The Last Laugh, S. J. Perelman, Simon & Schuster
American Dreams: Lost & Found, Studs Terkel, Pantheon

─────
FICTION
─────
Winner: The White Hotel, D.M Thomas, Viking

Finalists:

The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen, Elizabeth Bowen, Alfred A. Knopf
The Stories of Ray Bradbury, Ray Bradbury, Alfred A. Knopf
Zuckerman Unbound, Philip Roth, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Dad, William Wharton, Alfred A. Knopf

─────
HISTORY
─────
Winner: Land of Savagery/Land of Promise: The European Image of the American Frontier, Ray Allen Billington, W.W. Norton & Company

Finalists:

Personal Impressions, Isaiah Berlin, Viking
The Terrible Secret: Suppression of the Truth About Hitler, Walter Lagueur, Little, Brown and Company
In Naming Names, Victor Navasky, Viking
To Feed Their Hopes: A Book of American Women, John Sanford, University of Illinois
The Road to Nuremberg, Bradley F. Smith, Basic Books
Los Angeles: The Enormous Village, John D. Weaver, Capra Press

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Three Pieces, Ntozake Shange, St. Martin’s Press

Finalists:

A Coast of Trees, A.R. Ammons, W. W. Norton & Company
Hades In Manganese, Clayton Eshleman, Black Sparrow
Taking Notice, Marilyn Hacker, Alfred A. Knopf
Hard Words and Other Poems, Ursula K. LeGuin, Harper & Row

1980

───────
FICTION
───────
Winner: The Second Coming, Walker Percy, Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Finalists:

Darkness Visible, William Golding, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Smiley’s People, John Le Carre, Alfred A. Knopf
Bellefleur, Joyce Carol Oates, Dutton
A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole, Louisiana State University

───────────
GENERAL INTEREST
───────────
Winner: Without Fear or Favor, Harrison Salisbury, NY Times Books

Finalists:

Anatomy of an Illness, Norman Cousins, W. W. Norton & Company
History and the Idea of Progress, Robert Nisbet, Basic Books
Nature and Culture, Barbara Novak, Oxford University Press
Heartsounds, Martha Weinman Lear, Simon & Schuster

───────────
HISTORY/BIOGRAPHY
───────────
Winner: Walter Lippmann and the American Century, Ronald Steel, Little, Brown and Company

Finalists:

The Dream of the Golden Mountains, Malcolm Cowley, Viking
China Men, Maxine Hong Kingston, Alfred A. Knopf
My Guru and His Disciple, Christopher Isherwood, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Fin-de-Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture, Carl Emil Schorske, Alfred A. Knopf
Being Bernard Berenson, Meryle Secrest, Hold, Rinehart & Winston

─────
POETRY
─────
Winner: Kill the Messenger, Robert Kelly, Black Sparrow

Finalists:

Landscapes of Living and Dying, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, New Directions
Great Slave Lake Suite, Leland Hickman, Momentum Books
Scripts for the Pageant, James Merrill, Atheneum
Being Here, Robert Penn Warren, Random House