The J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, established in 1999, is a literary award "given annually to aid in the completion of a significant work of nonfiction on a topic of American political or social concern."[1] The prize is given by the Nieman Foundation and by the Columbia University School of Journalism[2] and is intended to "assist in closing the gap between the time and money an author has and the time and money that finishing a book requires.
Every year, one or two award winners receive an award of at least $25,000,[3] and a finalist may receive a $5,000 award.[4] [5] Shortlisted books, introduced in 2016, receive no monetary award.[6]
Titles listed below are the named titles in the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Awards documents. Because the books are listed as in-progress, the book titles may have changed after publication. When applicable, the published book has been linked.
| 1999 | The Best Years of Their Lives: One Town’s Veterans and How They Changed the World | Winner | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | James Tobin | Work of the Wind: A Remarkable Family, an Overlooked Genius, and the Race for Flight | Winner | |
| Finalist | ||||
| 2001 | A Need to Know: Inside the Warren Commission | Winner | ||
| Finalist | ||||
| 2002 | On Dams | Winner | ||
| Finalist | ||||
| 2003 | Mapping the New World: An Inquiry into the Meaning of Sprawl | Winner | ||
| Finalist | ||||
| 2004 | Slavery Inc. | Winner | ||
| Finalist | ||||
| 2005 | Home Fires | Winner | ||
| Finalist | ||||
| 2006 | Emily Post and the Rise of Practical Feminism | Winner | [8] | |
| Finalist | ||||
| 2007 | Twelve Condemned to Die: Scipio Africanus Jones and The Struggle for Justice That Remade a Nation | Winner | ||
| Finalist | ||||
| 2008 | The Means of Reproduction | Winner | ||
| Finalist | ||||
| 2009 | Yellow Dirt: The Betrayal of the Navajos | Winner | [9] | |
| 2010 | Ghetto Ball: A Coach, His Team, and the Struggle of an American City | Winner | ||
| Finalist | ||||
| 2011 | Big Little Man: The Asian Male at the Dawn of the Asian Century | Winner | ||
| The Fiddler on Pantico Run | Finalist | |||
| Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History | ||||
| 2012 | The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster | Winner | ||
| Finalist | ||||
| 2013 | Factory Man | Winner | ||
| Finalist | ||||
| 2014 | When Yellow Was Black: The untold story of the first fight for desegregation in Southern schools | Winner | ||
| Finalist | ||||
| 2015 | Liquid Desert: Life and Death of the Great Lakes | Winner | ||
| Finalist | ||||
| 2016 | Separate: A Story of Race, Ambition and the Battle That Brought Legal Segregation to America | Winner | [10] | |
| Finalist | ||||
| Shortlist | ||||
| 2017 | Kochland | Winner | [11] | |
| The Newcomers | Finalist | |||
| Shortlist | ||||
| 2018 | Soul Full of Coal Dust: The True Story of An Epic Battle for Justice | Winner | [12] [13] | |
| No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us | ||||
| Eyes in the Sky | Shortlist | [14] [15] | ||
| Lightning Flowers | ||||
| Nobody's Child: A Tragedy, a Trial, and the History of the Insanity Defense | ||||
| 2019 | Let the Lord Sort Them: Texas and the Death Penalty's Rise and Fall in America | Winner | [16] | |
| Mara: The Making of the MS13 | ||||
| Made in China: How an Engineer Ended Up in a Chinese Gulag Making Products for Kmart | Shortlist | [17] | ||
| This Is All I Got: One Woman’s Desperate Year in the New Gilded Age | ||||
| Let the Record Show: ACT UP and the Enduring Relationship of AIDS | ||||
| 2020 | Seed Money: Monsanto’s Past and the Future of Food | Winner | [18] | |
| American Caliph: The True Story of the Hanafi Siege, America’s First Homegrown Islamic Terror Attack | ||||
| Beloved Beasts: The Story of Conservation and the Fight to Protect Life on Earth | Shortlist | [19] [20] | ||
| Let the Record Show: A Political History of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, ACT UP, NY 1987-1993 | ||||
| Foxconned: How the Mindless Pursuit of Good Jobs Destroys Homes, Wastes Billions and Enriches the Few | ||||
| 2021 | Addiction, Inc.: How the Corporate Takeover of America’s Treatment Industry Created a Profitable Epidemic | Winner | [21] [22] | |
| Diary of a Misfit | ||||
| The Movement Made Us | Shortlist | [23] [24] | ||
| House of Swann: Where Slaves Became Queens — and Changed the World | ||||
| The Mother of All Things: On Climate Change, the Stories We Tell, and a Journey to the Edge of Antarctica | ||||
| 2022 | We Were Once a Family: The Hart Murder-Suicide and the System Failing Our Kids | Winner | [25] [26] [27] | |
| The Life: Sex, Work, and Love in America | ||||
| American Scare: A Cold War in the Sunshine State | Finalist | [28] [29] [30] | ||
| Disillusioned: How the Suburbs and Their Schools Undermine The American Dream | ||||
| The Prince and the Revolutionary: Children of War |