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." The prize is given by the Nieman Foundation and by the Columbia University School of Journalism.[1]
Established in 1998, the Lukas Prize Project consists of three awards:[2]
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.[2] [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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | Henry Mayer | All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery | |
| 2000 | Witold Rybczynski | A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century | |
| 2001 | David Nasaw | The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst | |
| 2002 | Diane McWhorter | ||
| 2003 | Samantha Power | "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide | |
| 2004 | David Maraniss | They Marched into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967 | |
| 2005 | Evan Wright | Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War | |
| 2006 | Nate Blakeslee | Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town | |
| 2007 | Lawrence Wright | The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 | |
| 2008 | Jeffrey Toobin | ||
| 2009 | Jane Mayer | The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals | |
| 2010 | David Finkel | The Good Soldiers | |
| 2011[5] | The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam | Farrar, Straus & Giroux | |
| Jefferson Cowie | Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class | New Press | |
| Paul Greenberg | Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food | Penguin Press | |
| Siddhartha Mukherjee | Scribner | ||
| 2012[6] | The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White | Viking Press | |
| Manning Marable | Viking Press | ||
| 2013[7] | Scribner | ||
| Cynthia Carr | Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz | Bloomsbury | |
| 2014[8] | Crown Publishers | ||
| Jonathan M. Katz | The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster | Palgrave Macmillan | |
| 2015[9] | The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan | Crown Publishers | |
| Joshua Davis | Spare Parts: Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the American Dream | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | |
| 2016[10] [11] | Viking Penguin | ||
| Adam Briggle | A Field Philosopher's Guide to Fracking: How One Texas Town Stood Up to Big Oil and Gas | Liveright | |
| Kathryn J. Edin & H. Luke Shaefer | $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | |
| Dale Russakoff | The Prize: Who's in Charge of America's Schools? | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | |
| Stephen Witt | Viking Penguin | ||
| 2017[12] [13] | Nation Books | ||
| Arlie Russell Hochschild | Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning On the American Right | The New Press | |
| Nancy Isenberg | Viking | ||
| Jane Mayer | Doubleday | ||
| Zachary Roth | The Great Suppression: Voting Rights, Corporate Cash, and the Conservative Assault on Democracy | Crown | |
| 2018[14] [15] | Amy Goldstein | Simon & Schuster | |
| Nate Blakeslee | American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West | Crown | |
| Jessica Bruder | W.W. Norton & Company | ||
| Lauren Markham | The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants And the Making of an American Life | Crown | |
| Helen Thorpe | The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom | Scribner | |
| 2019[16] [17] | Penguin Press | ||
| Howard Blum | In the Enemy's House: The Secret Saga of the FBI Agent and the Code Breaker Who Caught the Russian Spies | HarperCollins | |
| Lauren Hilgers | Patriot Number One: American Dreams in Chinatown | Crown | |
| Chris McGreal | American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts | PublicAffairs | |
| Sarah Smarsh | Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth | Scribner | |
| 2020[18] [19] | An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago | Nan A. Talese/Doubleday | |
| Emily Bazelon | Charged: The Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration | Random House | |
| Jennifer Berry Hawes | Grace Will Lead Us Home: The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness | St. Martin's Press | |
| Jodie Adams Kirshner | Broke: Hardship and Resilience in a City of Broken Promises | St. Martin's Press | |
| Margaret O'Mara | The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America | Penguin Press | |
| 2021[20] [21] | Jessica Goudeau | After the Last Border: Two Families and the Story of Refuge in America | Viking |
| Becky Cooper | We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence | Grand Central Publishing | |
| Seyward Darby | Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism | Little, Brown and Company | |
| Barton Gellman | Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State | Penguin Press | |
| Isabel Wilkerson | Random House | ||
| 2022[22] | |||