Book Award Laureates
Our Past Laureates

2023

Peniel E. Joseph

The Third Reconstruction: America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century

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2022

2022Elizabeth K. Hinton

America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s

2022Heather McGhee

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together

2021

Claudio Saunt

Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory

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2020

Jonathan Metzl

Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

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2019

Shane Bauer

American Prison

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2018

2018Peter Edelman

Not a Crime to Be Poor

2018Timothy B. Tyson

The Blood of Emmett Till

2017

Matthew Desmond

Evicted

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2016

David Maraniss

Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story

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2015

2015Miriam Pawel

The Crusades of Cesar Chavez

2015Andrew Maraniss

Strong Inside: Perry Wallace and the Collision of Race and Sports in the South

2014

2014Thomas Healy

The Great Dissent

2014John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell

March: Book One

2013

Joseph E. Stiglitz

The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future

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2012

Kathryn Sikkink

The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions Are Changing World Politics

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2011

Michael Lewis

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

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2010

2010Amy Bach

Ordinary Injustice

2010Dave Eggers

Zeitoun

2009

2009Jane Mayer

The Dark Side

2009Karl Jacoby

Shadows at Dawn: An Apache Massacre and the Violence of History

2008

Michael Honey

Going Down Jericho Road

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2007

2007Douglas Brinkley

The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast

2007Taylor Branch

At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68

2006

2006John Hope Franklin

Mirror to America

2006Nick Kotz

Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws That Changed America

2006P.W. Singer

Children at War

2005

2005Jim Wooten

We Are All the Same: A Story of a Boy's Courage and a Mother's Love

2005Geoffrey Stone

Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime From the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism

2004

2004Scott Turow

Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer’s Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty

2004Mamie Till-Mobley

Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America

2003

2003Philip Dray

At the Hands of a Person Unknown: The Lynching of Black America

2003Samantha Power

A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide

2002

2002Gail Buckley

American Patriots: The Story of Blacks in the Military from the Revolution to Desert Storm

2002Eric Arnesen

Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality

2001

2001James Allen

Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America

2001George Packer

Blood of the Liberals

2000

2000Anthony Sampson

Mandela

2000Katherine Newman

No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City

1999

John Lewis and Michael D’Orso

Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement

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1998

1998Randall Kennedy

Race, Crime, and the Law

1998Samuel Hynes

The Soldiers’ Tale

1997

David M. Oshinsky

Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice.

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1996

1996Pete Earley

Circumstantial Evidence

1996Dan T. Carter

The Politics of Rage

1995

John Egerton

Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South

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1994

Jack Bass

Taming the Storm: The Life and Times of Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr. and the South’s Fight Over Civil Rights

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1993

Al Gore

Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit

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1992

Melissa Fay Greene

Praying for Sheetrock

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1991

1991Andrew Revkin

The Burning Season: The Murder of Chico Mendes and the Fight for the Amazon Rain Forest

1991Myles Horton and Herbert and Judith Kohl

The Long Haul

1990

1990Tracy Kidder

Among Schoolchildren

1990Alec Wilkinson

Big Sugar

1989

1989Neil Sheehan

A Bright Shining Lie

1989Jonathan Kozol

Rachel and Her Children

1988

1988Toni Morrison

Beloved

1988Pauli Murray

Song in a Weary Throat

1987

David J. Garrow

Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

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1986

1986J. Anthony Lukas

Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families

1986Robert Norrell

Reaping the Whirlwind: The Civil Rights Movement in Tuskegee

1985

Raymond Bonner

Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy and El Salvador

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1984

Roger Rosenblatt

Children of War

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1983

Stephen B. Oates

Let the Trumpet Sound: The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr.

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1982

Peter S. Prescott

The Child Savers

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1981

William H. Chafe

Civilities and Civil Rights

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