The J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize is an annual $10,000 award given to a book that exemplifies, "literary grace, a commitment to serious research and social concern."[1] The prize is given by the Nieman Foundation and by the Columbia University School of Journalism.[1][2]
Established in 1998, the Lukas Prize Project consists of three awards:[1]
The project is named for Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and author, J. Anthony Lukas; it has been underwritten since its inception by the family of Mark Lynton, a German Jew who had careers with the British military, Citroen and Hunter Douglas.[1][3]
In the list below, winners are listed first in the gold row, followed by the other nominees. Any finalists are marked with an asterisk.[4] Note that shortlists were announced only starting in 2016; previously they would just announce winners and any finalists.
Year | Author | Title | Publisher | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1999 | Henry Mayer | All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery | Winner | ||
2000 | Witold Rybczynski | A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century | Winner | ||
2001 | David Nasaw | The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst | Winner | ||
2002 | Diane McWhorter | Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution | Winner | ||
2003 | Samantha Power | "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide | Winner | ||
2004 | David Maraniss | They Marched into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967 | Winner | ||
2005 | Evan Wright | Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War | Winner | ||
2006 | Nate Blakeslee | Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town | Winner | [5] | |
2007 | Lawrence Wright | The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 | Winner | [6] | |
2008 | Jeffrey Toobin | The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court | Winner | ||
2009 | Jane Mayer | The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals | Doubleday | Winner | [7] |
2010 | David Finkel | The Good Soldiers | Winner | ||
2011 | Eliza Griswold | The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam | Farrar, Straus & Giroux | Winner | [8] |
Jefferson Cowie | Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class | New Press | Finalist | [8] | |
Paul Greenberg | Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food | Penguin Press | Finalist | [8] | |
Siddhartha Mukherjee | The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer | Scribner | Finalist | [8] | |
2012 | Daniel J. Sharfstein | The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White | Viking Press | Winner | [9] |
Manning Marable | Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention | Viking Press | Finalist | [9] | |
2013 | Andrew Solomon | Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity | Scribner | Winner | [10] |
Cynthia Carr | Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz | Bloomsbury | Finalist | [10] | |
2014 | Sheri Fink | Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital | Crown Publishers | Winner | [11] |
Jonathan M. Katz | The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster | Palgrave Macmillan | Finalist | [11] | |
2015 | Jenny Nordberg | The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan | Crown Publishers | Winner | [12] |
Joshua Davis | Spare Parts: Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the American Dream | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | Shortlist | [12] | |
2016 | Susan Southard | Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War | Viking Penguin | Winner | [13] |
Dale Russakoff | The Prize: Who's in Charge of America's Schools? | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | Finalist | [13] | |
Adam Briggle | A Field Philosopher's Guide to Fracking: How One Texas Town Stood Up to Big Oil and Gas | Liveright | Shortlist | [14] | |
Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer | $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | Shortlist | [14] | |
Stephen Witt | How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century, and the Patient Zero of Piracy | Viking Penguin | Shortlist | [14] | |
2017 | Gary Younge | Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives | Nation Books | Winner | [15][16] |
Zachary Roth | The Great Suppression: Voting Rights, Corporate Cash, and the Conservative Assault on Democracy | Crown | Finalist | [15][16] | |
Arlie Russell Hochschild | Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning On the American Right | The New Press | Shortlist | [17] | |
Nancy Isenberg | White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America | Viking | Shortlist | [17] | |
Jane Mayer | Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right | Doubleday | Shortlist | [17] | |
2018 | Amy Goldstein | Janesville: An American Story | Simon & Schuster | Winner | [18] |
Jessica Bruder | Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century | W.W. Norton & Company | Finalist | [18] | |
Nate Blakeslee | American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West | Crown | Shortlist | [19] | |
Lauren Markham | The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants And the Making of an American Life | Crown | Shortlist | [19] | |
Helen Thorpe | The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom | Scribner | Shortlist | [19] | |
2019 | Shane Bauer | American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment | Penguin Press | Winner | [20] |
Lauren Hilgers | Patriot Number One: American Dreams in Chinatown | Crown | Finalist | [20] | |
Howard Blum | In the Enemy's House: The Secret Saga of the FBI Agent and the Code Breaker Who Caught the Russian Spies | HarperCollins | Shortlist | [21] | |
Chris McGreal | American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts | PublicAffairs | Shortlist | [21] | |
Sarah Smarsh | Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth | Scribner | Shortlist | [21] | |
2020 | Alex Kotlowitz | An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago | Nan A. Talese/Doubleday | Winner | [22][23] |
Emily Bazelon | Charged: The Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration | Random House | Finalist | [22][23] | |
Jennifer Berry Hawes | Grace Will Lead Us Home: The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness | St. Martin's Press | Shortlist | [24][25] | |
Jodie Adams Kirshner | Broke: Hardship and Resilience in a City of Broken Promises | St. Martin's Press | Shortlist | [24][25] | |
Margaret O'Mara | The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America | Penguin Press | Shortlist | [24][25] | |
2021 | Jessica Goudeau | After the Last Border: Two Families and the Story of Refuge in America | Viking | Winner | [26][27] |
Barton Gellman | Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State | Penguin Press | Finalist | [26][27] | |
Becky Cooper | We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence | Grand Central Publishing | Shortlist | [28][29] | |
Seyward Darby | Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism | Little, Brown and Company | Shortlist | [28][29] | |
Isabel Wilkerson | Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents | Random House | Shortlist | [28][29] | |
2022 | Andrea Elliott | Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City | Random House | Winner | [30][31] |
Patrick Radden Keefe | Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty | Doubleday | Finalist | [30][31] | |
Scott Ellsworth | The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice | Dutton | Shortlist | [32][33] | |
Jessica Nordell | The End of Bias: A Beginning: The Science and Practice of Overcoming Unconscious Bias | Metropolitan | Shortlist | [32][33] | |
Joshua Prager | The Family Roe: An American Story | Norton/Liverigh | Shortlist | [32][33] | |
2023 | Linda Villarosa | Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation | Doubleday | Winner | [34] |
Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa | His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice | Viking | Finalist | [34] | |
Rachel Aviv | Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | Shortlist | [35] | |
Lyndsie Bourgon | Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America’s Woods | Little, Brown Spark | Shortlist | [35] | |
Jack Lowery | It Was Vulgar & It Was Beautiful: How AIDS Activists Used Art to Fight a Pandemic | Bold Type Books | Shortlist | [35] | |
2024 | Dashka Slater | Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | Winner | [36] |
Kerry Howley | Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State | Knopf | Finalist | [36] | |
Cara McGoogan | Blood Farm: The Explosive Big Pharma Scandal that Altered the AIDS Crisis | Shortlist | [37] | ||
Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson | American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15 | Shortlist | [37] | ||
Joe Sexton | The Lost Sons of Omaha: Two Young Men in an American Tragedy | Shortlist | [37] | ||
2025 | Richard Beck | Homeland: The War on Terror in American Life | Crown | Shortlist | [38] |
Barbara Bradley Hagerty | Bringing Ben Home: A Murder, a Conviction, and the Fight to Redeem American Justice | Penguin Random House | Shortlist | [38] | |
Mara Kardas-Nelson | We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky: The Seductive Promise of Microfinance | Metropolitan | Shortlist | [38] | |
Rebecca Nagle | By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land | Harper | Shortlist | [38] | |
Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans | The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels | Crown | Shortlist | [38] |