Ned Blackhawk’s “The Rediscovery of America,” winner last fall of a National Book Award, is a finalist for a history honor presented by the J
NEW YORK (AP) — Ned Blackhawk's “The Rediscovery of America,” winner last fall of a National Book Award, is a finalist for a history honor presented by the J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project.
Blackhawk's account of Native Americans over the past five centuries is among five nominees for the Mark Lynton History Prize, a $10,000 award given for work which “combines intellectual distinction with felicity of expression.” The other books cited were Gary J. Bass' “Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia"; Jonathan Eig's biography of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., “King: A Life”; Dylan C. Penningroth's “Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights” and Yepoka Yeebo's “Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World.”
Finalists for the Lukas Book Prize, also worth $10,000, are Kerry Howley's “Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State”; Cara McGoogan's “Blood Farm: The Explosive Big Pharma Scandal that Altered the AIDS Crisis”; Cameron McWhirter's and Zusha Elinson's “American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15”; Joe Sexton's “The Lost Sons of Omaha: Two Young Men in an American Tragedy” and Dashka Slater's “Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed.”
The Lukas Book Prize is given for a book which demonstrates “literary grace, commitment to serious research and original reporting.”
The Lukas prize project also announced the shortlist for the Lukas Work-In-Progress Awards, for which two winners each receive $25,000 to “aid in the completion of a significant work of nonfiction on a topic of American political or social concern.”
The nominees are Lorraine Boissoneault's “Body Weather: Notes on Illness in the Anthropocene”; Alice Driver's “The Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America’s Largest Meatpacking Company”; Ranita Ray's “Violent Schools: Slow Death in the American Classroom”; Jessica Slice's “Unfit Parent: On the Barriers and Brilliance of Raising Kids While Disabled and Chronically Ill” and Nilo Tabrizy and Khadijah Heydari's “For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran’s Women-Led Uprising.”
Winners will be announced March 19. The Lukas prizes, named for the late author and investigative journalist, were founded in 1998. They are co-administered by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard and sponsored by the family of the late historian and businessman Mark Lynton.