J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award
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." The prize is given by the Nieman Foundation and by the Columbia University School of Journalism 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, and a finalist may receive a $5,000 award. Shortlisted books, introduced in 2016, receive no monetary award.
Recipients
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.| Year | Author | Title | Result | Ref. |
| 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 | |
| 2000 | Finalist | |||
| 2000 | Finalist | |||
| 2001 | A Need to Know: Inside the Warren Commission | Winner | ||
| 2001 | Finalist | |||
| 2002 | On Dams | Winner | ||
| 2002 | Finalist | |||
| 2002 | Finalist | |||
| 2003 | Mapping the New World: An Inquiry into the Meaning of Sprawl | Winner | ||
| 2003 | Finalist | |||
| 2003 | Finalist | |||
| 2004 | Slavery Inc. | Winner | ||
| 2004 | Finalist | |||
| 2004 | Finalist | |||
| 2005 | Home Fires | Winner | ||
| 2005 | Finalist | |||
| 2005 | Finalist | |||
| 2006 | Emily Post and the Rise of Practical Feminism | Winner | ||
| 2006 | Finalist | |||
| 2006 | Finalist | |||
| 2007 | Twelve Condemned to Die: Scipio Africanus Jones and The Struggle for Justice That Remade a Nation | Winner | ||
| 2007 | Finalist | |||
| 2008 | The Means of Reproduction | Winner | ||
| 2008 | Finalist | |||
| 2008 | Finalist | |||
| 2009 | Yellow Dirt: The Betrayal of the Navajos | Winner | ||
| 2010 | Ghetto Ball: A Coach, His Team, and the Struggle of an American City | Winner | ||
| 2010 | Finalist | |||
| 2011 | Big Little Man: The Asian Male at the Dawn of the Asian Century | Winner | ||
| 2011 | Finalist | |||
| 2011 | Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History | Finalist | ||
| 2012 | The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster | Winner | ||
| 2012 | Finalist | |||
| 2013 | Factory Man | Winner | ||
| 2013 | Finalist | |||
| 2014 | When Yellow Was Black: The untold story of the first fight for desegregation in Southern schools | Winner | ||
| 2014 | Finalist | |||
| 2015 | Liquid Desert: Life and Death of the Great Lakes | Winner | ||
| 2015 | Finalist | |||
| 2016 | Separate: A Story of Race, Ambition and the Battle That Brought Legal Segregation to America | Winner | ||
| 2016 | Finalist | |||
| 2016 | Shortlist | |||
| 2016 | Shortlist | |||
| 2016 | Shortlist | |||
| 2017 | Kochland | Winner | ||
| 2017 | The Newcomers | Finalist | ||
| 2017 | Shortlist | |||
| 2017 | Shortlist | |||
| 2017 | Shortlist | |||
| 2018 | Soul Full of Coal Dust: The True Story of An Epic Battle for Justice | Winner | ||
| 2018 | No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us | Winner | ||
| 2018 | Eyes in the Sky | Shortlist | ||
| 2018 | Lightning Flowers | Shortlist | ||
| 2018 | Nobody's Child: A Tragedy, a Trial, and the History of the Insanity Defense | Shortlist | ||
| 2019 | Let the Lord Sort Them: Texas and the Death Penalty's Rise and Fall in America | Winner | ||
| 2019 | Mara: The Making of the MS13 | Winner | ||
| 2019 | Made in China: How an Engineer Ended Up in a Chinese Gulag Making Products for Kmart | Shortlist | ||
| 2019 | This Is All I Got: One Woman’s Desperate Year in the New Gilded Age | Shortlist | ||
| 2019 | Let the Record Show: ACT UP and the Enduring Relationship of AIDS | Shortlist | ||
| 2020 | Seed Money: Monsanto’s Past and the Future of Food | Winner | ||
| 2020 | American Caliph: The True Story of the Hanafi Siege, America’s First Homegrown Islamic Terror Attack | Winner | ||
| 2020 | Beloved Beasts: The Story of Conservation and the Fight to Protect Life on Earth | Shortlist | ||
| 2020 | Let the Record Show: A Political History of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, ACT UP, NY 1987-1993 | Shortlist | ||
| 2020 | Foxconned: How the Mindless Pursuit of Good Jobs Destroys Homes, Wastes Billions and Enriches the Few | Shortlist | ||
| 2021 | Addiction, Inc.: How the Corporate Takeover of America’s Treatment Industry Created a Profitable Epidemic | Winner | ||
| 2021 | Diary of a Misfit | Winner | ||
| 2021 | The Movement Made Us | Shortlist | ||
| 2021 | House of Swann: Where Slaves Became Queens — and Changed the World | Shortlist | ||
| 2021 | The Mother of All Things: On Climate Change, the Stories We Tell, and a Journey to the Edge of Antarctica | Shortlist | ||
| 2022 | We Were Once a Family: The Hart Murder-Suicide and the System Failing Our Kids | Winner | ||
| 2022 | The Life: Sex, Work, and Love in America | Winner | ||
| 2022 | American Scare: A Cold War in the Sunshine State | Finalist | ||
| 2022 | Disillusioned: How the Suburbs and Their Schools Undermine The American Dream | Finalist | ||
| 2022 | The Prince and the Revolutionary: Children of War | Finalist | ||
| 2023 | The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family | Winner | ||
| 2023 | Uncivil: One Town's Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New Battle for America's Schools | Winner | ||
| 2023 | Shortlist | |||
| 2023 | Shortlist | |||
| 2023 | Shortlist | |||
| 2024 | Body Weather: Notes on Illness in the Anthropocene | Winner | ||
| 2024 | Alice Driver | The Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America’s Largest Meatpacking Company | Winner |