Los Angeles Times Book Prize

Since 1980, the Los Angeles Times has awarded a set of annual book prizes. The Prizes currently have nine categories: biography, current interest, fiction, first fiction (the Art Seidenbaum Award added in 1991), history, mystery/thriller (category added in 2000), poetry, science and technology (category added in 1989), and young adult fiction (category added in 1998). In addition, the Robert Kirsch Award is presented annually to a living author with a substantial connection to the American West.[1] It is named in honor of Robert Kirsch, the Los Angeles Times book critic from 1952 until his death in 1980 whose idea it was to establish the book prizes.

David Eggers, double winner of the Book Prize in 2009

The Book Prize program was founded by Art Seidenbaum, a Los Angeles Times book editor from 1978 to 1985. An award named for him was added a year after his death in 1990. Works are eligible during the year of their first US publication in English, and may be written originally in languages other than English. The author of each winning book and the Kirsch Award recipient receives a citation and $1,000. The prizes are presented the day before the annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.

Winners

Biography

Current interest
  • 2019: Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration by Emily Bazelon (Random House)[2]
  • 2018: The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches From the Border by Francisco Cantu, Riverhead Books
  • 2017: Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America by Nancy MacLean, Viking Press
  • 2016: Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich translated by Bela Shayevich (Random House)
  • 2015: Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security by Sarah Chayes (W.W. Norton and Company)
  • 2014: The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League by Jeff Hobbs (Scribner)
  • 2013: Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink (Crown)
  • 2012: Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo (Random House)
  • 2011: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
  • 2010: The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis (W. W. Norton & Company)
  • 2009: Zeitoun by Dave Eggers (McSweeney’s Books)
  • 2008: Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency by Barton Gellman (The Penguin Press)
  • 2007: Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point by Elizabeth D. Samet (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
  • 2006: Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance by Ian Buruma (Penguin Press)
  • 2005: Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War, by Anthony Shadid (Henry Holt)
  • 2004: Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America and the New Face of American War by Evan Wright (G.P. Putnam's Sons)
  • 2003: The New Chinese Empire - And What It Means for the United States by Ross Terrill (Basic Books)
  • 2002: Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex by Judith Levine (University of Minnesota Press)
  • 2001: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich (Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt and Company)
  • 2000: Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War by Frances FitzGerald (Simon & Schuster)
  • 1999: Sidewalk (with Photographs by Ovie Carter) by Mitchell Duneier (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
  • 1998: We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
  • 1997: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
  • 1996: Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War by Peter Maass (Alfred A. Knopf)
  • 1995: Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black by Gregory Howard Williams (Dutton)
  • 1994: Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger (Simon & Schuster)
  • 1993: Mexican Americans: The Ambivalent Minority by Peter Skerry (The Free Press)
  • 1992: The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama (The Free Press)
  • 1991: Why Americans Hate Politics: The Death of the Democratic Process by E. J. Dionne, Jr. (Simon & Schuster)
  • 1990: Disappearing through the Skylight: Culture and Technology in the Twentieth Century by O. B. Hardison, Jr. (Viking)
  • 1989: Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–1963 by Taylor Branch (Simon & Schuster)
  • 1988: Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country by William Greider (Simon & Schuster)
  • 1987: The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins (W.W. Norton)
  • 1986: Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White by Joseph Lelyveld (Times Books)
  • 1985: Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life by Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler and Steven M. Tipton (University of California Press)
  • 1984: Cities and the Wealth of Nations by Jane Jacobs (Random House)
  • 1983: Lost in the Cosmos by Walker Percy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
  • 1982: The Fate of the Earth by Jonathan Schell (Alfred A. Knopf)
  • 1981: Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number by Jacobo Timerman (Alfred A. Knopf)
  • 1980: Without Fear or Favor by Harrison Salisbury (New York Times Books) [Winner of the General Award—no Current Interest Award this year]

Fiction

History
  • 2019: They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South, by Stephanie Jones-Rogers (Yale University Press)
  • 2018: Travelers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism: 1919–1945 by Julia Boyd (Pegasus Books)
  • 2017: The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan (W. W. Norton & Company)
  • 2016: An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873 by Benjamin Madley (Yale University Press)
  • 2015: Killing a King: The Assassination of a Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel by Dan Ephron (W.W. Norton and Company)
  • 2014: The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916–1931 by Adam Tooze (Viking)
  • 2013: The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark (HarperCollins)
  • 2012: America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union by Fergus M. Bordewich (Simon & Schuster)
  • 2011: Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America by Richard White (W.W. Norton & Company)
  • 2010: The Killing of Crazy Horse by Thomas Powers (Knopf)
  • 2009: Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance 1950–1963 by Kevin Starr (Oxford University Press)
  • 2008: Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe by Mark Mazower (The Penguin Press)
  • 2007: Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner (Doubleday)
  • 2006: The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright (Alfred A. Knopf)
  • 2005: Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves by Adam Hochschild (Houghton Mifflin)
  • 2004: Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism by Geoffrey R. Stone (W.W. Norton & Company)
  • 2003: An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America by Henry Wiencek (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
  • 2002: Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Michael B. Oren (Oxford University Press)
  • 2001: Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus by Rick Perlstein (Hill and Wang Division, Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
  • 2000: The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach by Alice Kaplan (University of Chicago Press)
  • 1999: Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John W. Dower (W.W. Norton)
  • 1998: The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity by Roy Porter (W.W. Norton)
  • 1997: A People's Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution by Orlando Figes (Viking)
  • 1996: Black Sea by Neal Ascherson (Hill & Wang)
  • 1995: Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America by Jackson Lears (Basic Books)
  • 1994: Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940 by George Chauncey (Basic Books)
  • 1993: New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery by Anthony Grafton (Harvard University Press)
  • 1992: Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families under Fascism by Alexander Stille (Summit)
  • 1991: The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America by Nicholas Lemann (Alfred A. Knopf)
  • 1990: The Quest for El Cid by Richard Fletcher (Alfred A. Knopf)
  • 1989: An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood by Neal Gabler (Crown Books)
  • 1988: Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 by Eric Foner (Harper & Row)
  • 1987: The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide[3]
  • 1986: The First Socialist Society: A History of the Soviet Union from Within by Geoffrey Hosking (Harvard University Press)
  • 1985: Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn by Evan S. Connell (North Point Press)
  • 1984: The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History by Robert Darnton (Basic Books)
  • 1983: The Wheels of Commerce by Fernand Braudel (Harper & Row)
  • 1982: The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution, 1895–1980 by Jonathan D. Spence (Viking)
  • 1981: Land of Savagery/Land of Promise by Ray Allen Billington (W.W. Norton)
  • 1980: Walter Lippmann and the American Century by Ronald Steel (Atlantic/ Little Brown)

Mystery/thriller

Science and technology

Poetry

Young adult literature

The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction

Graphic Novel

The Robert Kirsch Award

Innovator's Award

The Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose

References
  1. Los Angeles Times Book Prizes home page.
  2. "LA Times 2019 Book Prizes". Festival of Books. Retrieved 2020-05-07.
  3. "The Los Angeles Times Book Prize, 1987". October 18, 1987 – via LA Times.
  4. Zahniser, David. "Los Angeles Times book prizes awarded to literary veterans, emerging authors". LATimes.com. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved April 23, 2018.
  5. "'When the Ground is Hard' wins LA Times Book Prize for YA". Books+Publishing. 2020-04-22. Retrieved 2020-05-07.
  6. "The Isherwood-Bachardy Prizes". isherwoodfoundation.org.
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