Barton Gellman’s portrait of Dick Cheney, “Angler,” among the big winners

Winners of the 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were announced Friday night before an audience gathered in the Chandler Auditorium of the Los Angeles Times building.

Robert Alter, the author of 22 works on the Bible, literary modernism and contemporary Hebrew literature, was also honored as the 29th recipient of the Robert Kirsch Award, which recognizes a body of work by an author living in the Western United States.

Winners, as well as finalists in all nine categories of the prizes, are listed below.

BIOGRAPHY:
H.W. Brands, “A Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt”

Ernest Freeberg, “Democracy’s Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent”

**WINNER Paula J. Giddings, “Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching”

Jon Meacham, “American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House”

Jackie Wullschlager, “Chagall: A Biography”

CURRENT INTEREST:
Steve Coll, “The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century”

Dexter Filkins, “The Forever War”

**WINNER Barton Gellman, “Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency”

Jane Mayer, “The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals”

Jill Bolte Taylor, “My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey”

FICTION:
Sebastian Barry, “The Secret Scripture”

Richard Price, “Lush Life”

**WINNER Marilynne Robinson, “Home”

Joan Silber, “The Size of the World”

Marisa Silver, “The God of War”

ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION:

Uwem Akpan, “Say You’re One of Them”

**WINNER Zoe Ferraris, “Finding Nouf”

Sadie Jones, “The Outcast”

Roma Tearne, “Mosquito”

David Wroblewski, “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle”

HISTORY:

Michael Dobbs, “One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War”

Drew Gilpin Faust, “This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War”

**WINNER Mark Mazower, “Hitler’s Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe”

Thomas J. Sugrue, “Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North”

Rick Wartzman, “Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath”

MYSTERY/THRILLER:

Colin Harrison, “The Finder”

**WINNER Michael Koryta, “Envy the Night”

Simon Lewis, “Bad Traffic: An Inspector Jian Novel”

Nina Revoyr, “The Age of Dreaming”

Tom Rob Smith, “Child 44”

POETRY

**WINNER Frank Bidart, “Watching the Spring Festival: Poems”

Jorie Graham, “Sea Change: Poems”

Marie Howe, “The Kingdom of Ordinary Time: Poems”

Cole Swensen, “Ours”

Connie Voisine, “Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream”

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY:

Avery Gilbert, “What the Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life”

Kenneth R. Miller, “Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul”

Martin J.S. Rudwick, “Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform”

**WINNER Leonard Susskind, “The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics”

Carl Zimmer, “Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life”

YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE:

Candace Fleming, “The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary”

Neil Gaiman, “The Graveyard Book”

Oscar Hijuelos, “Dark Dude”

Nate Powell, “Swallow Me Whole”
**WINNER Terry Pratchett, “Nation”

2008 ROBERT KIRSCH AWARDRobert Alter

--- from staff reports