The Pulitzer Prizes 2009--Nonfiction winners

April 20, 6:30 PMNon-Fiction Books ExaminerMarilyn Crain

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 The 2009 Pulitzer Prizewinners and Nominated Finalists were announced this afternoon, Monday, April 20, 2009, at Columbia University. Here are the winners in the non-fiction categories: 

 

History

Awarded to “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family,” by Annette Gordon-Reed (W.W. Norton & Company), a painstaking exploration of a sprawling multi-generation slave family that casts provocative new light on the relationship between Sally Hemings and her master, Thomas Jefferson.

Also nominated as finalists in this category were: “This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War,” by Drew Gilpin Faust (Alfred A. Knopf), a deeply researched, gracefully written examination of how a divided nation struggled to comprehend the meaning and practical consequences of unprecedented human carnage, and “The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s,” by G. Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot (The Penguin Press), an elegantly written account of a brief period in American history that left a profoundly altered national landscape.

 

Biography or Autobiography

Awarded to “American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House,” by Jon Meacham (Random House), an unflinching portrait of a not always admirable democrat but a pivotal president, written with an agile prose that brings the Jackson saga to life.

Also nominated as finalists in this category were: “Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt,” by H.W. Brands (Doubleday), a richly textured and highly readable exploration of the inner Roosevelt, presented with analytical acuity and flashes of originality, and “The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century,” by Steve Coll (The Penguin Press), an epic tale extending far beyond Osama Bin Laden and the calamity of 9/11, rooted in meticulous research and written with an urgency, clarity and flair that entertains as easily as it educates.

 

General Nonfiction

Awarded to “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II,” by Douglas A. Blackmon (Doubleday), a precise and eloquent work that examines a deliberate system of racial suppression and that rescues a multitude of atrocities from virtual obscurity.

Also nominated as finalists in this category were: “Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age,” by Arthur Herman (Bantam Books), an authoritative, deeply researched book that achieves an extraordinary balance in weighing two 9 mighty protagonists against each other, and “The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe,” by William I. Hitchcock (Free Press), a heavily documented exploration of the overlooked suffering of noncombatants in the victory over Nazi Germany, written with the dash of a novelist and the authority of a scholar.

 Lets take a look back and see who won in the early years?

Biography or Autobiography

--1919  The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams (Houghton)
--1918  Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed by William Cabell Bruce (Putnam)
--1917  Julia Ward Howe by Laura E. Richards and Maude Howe Elliott assisted by Florence Howe Hall (Houghton)

General Nonfiction

--1964  Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter (Random)
--1963  The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman (Macmillan)
--1962  The Making of the President 1960 by Theodore H. White (Atheneum)

History

--1919 ( No Award)
--1918  A History of the Civil War, 1861-1865 by James Ford Rhodes (Macmillan)
--1917  With Americans of Past and Present Days by His Excellency J.J. Jusserand