J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize
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.
Established in 1998, the Lukas Prize Project consists of three awards:
- The J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize
- The Mark Lynton History Prize
- The J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award
Recipients
In the list below, winners are listed first in the gold row, followed by the other nominees. Any finalists are marked with an asterisk. Note that shortlists were announced only starting in 2016; previously they would just announce winners and any finalists.| Year | Author | Title | Publisher | Result | |
| 1999 | All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery | Winner | |||
| 2000 | Winner | ||||
| 2001 | Winner | ||||
| 2002 | Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution | Winner | |||
| 2003 | Winner | ||||
| 2004 | They Marched into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967 | Winner | |||
| 2005 | Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War | Winner | |||
| 2006 | Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town | Winner | |||
| 2007 | Winner | ||||
| 2008 | Winner | ||||
| 2009 | Doubleday | Winner | |||
| 2010 | Winner | ||||
| 2011 | ' | Farrar, Straus & Giroux | Winner | ||
| 2011 | Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class | New Press | Finalist | ||
| 2011 | Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food | Penguin Press | Finalist | ||
| 2011 | ' | Scribner | Finalist | ||
| 2012 | Viking Press | Winner | |||
| 2012 | Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention | Viking Press | Finalist | ||
| 2013 | Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity | Scribner | Winner | ||
| 2013 | Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz | Bloomsbury | Finalist | ||
| 2014 | Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital | Crown Publishers | Winner | ||
| 2014 | ' | Palgrave Macmillan | Finalist | ||
| 2015 | Crown Publishers | Winner | |||
| 2015 | Spare Parts: Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the American Dream | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | Shortlist | ||
| 2016 | Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War | Viking Penguin | Winner | ||
| 2016 | ' | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | Finalist | ||
| 2016 | Liveright | Shortlist | |||
| 2016 | and H. Luke Shaefer | $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | Shortlist | |
| 2016 | How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century, and the Patient Zero of Piracy | Viking Penguin | Shortlist | ||
| 2017 | Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives | Nation Books | Winner | ||
| 2017 | ' | Crown | Finalist | ||
| 2017 | Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning On the American Right | The New Press | Shortlist | ||
| 2017 | White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America | Viking | Shortlist | ||
| 2017 | Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right | Doubleday | Shortlist | ||
| 2018 | Janesville: An American Story | Simon & Schuster | Winner | ||
| 2018 | Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century | W.W. Norton & Company | Finalist | ||
| 2018 | American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West | Crown | Shortlist | ||
| 2018 | ' | Crown | Shortlist | ||
| 2018 | ' | Scribner | Shortlist | ||
| 2019 | American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment | Penguin Press | Winner | ||
| 2019 | Patriot Number One: American Dreams in Chinatown | Crown | Finalist | ||
| 2019 | In the Enemy's House: The Secret Saga of the FBI Agent and the Code Breaker Who Caught the Russian Spies | HarperCollins | Shortlist | ||
| 2019 | American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts | PublicAffairs | Shortlist | ||
| 2019 | Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth | Scribner | Shortlist | ||
| 2020 | Nan A. Talese/Doubleday | Winner | |||
| 2020 | Charged: The Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration | Random House | Finalist | ||
| 2020 | Grace Will Lead Us Home: The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness | St. Martin's Press | Shortlist | ||
| 2020 | Broke: Hardship and Resilience in a City of Broken Promises | St. Martin's Press | Shortlist | ||
| 2020 | Penguin Press | Shortlist | |||
| 2021 | After the Last Border: Two Families and the Story of Refuge in America | Viking | Winner | ||
| 2021 | Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State | Penguin Press | Finalist | ||
| 2021 | We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence | Grand Central Publishing | Shortlist | ||
| 2021 | Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism | Little, Brown and Company | Shortlist | ||
| 2021 | Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents | Random House | Shortlist | ||
| 2022 | Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City | Random House | Winner | ||
| 2022 | Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty | Doubleday | Finalist | ||
| 2022 | ' | Dutton | Shortlist | ||
| 2022 | ' | Metropolitan | Shortlist | ||
| 2022 | ' | Norton/Liverigh | Shortlist | ||
| 2023 | Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation | Doubleday | Winner | ||
| 2023 | and Toluse Olorunnipa | His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice | Viking | Finalist | |
| 2023 | Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | Shortlist | ||
| 2023 | Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America’s Woods | Little, Brown Spark | Shortlist | ||
| 2023 | It Was Vulgar & It Was Beautiful: How AIDS Activists Used Art to Fight a Pandemic | Bold Type Books | Shortlist | ||
| 2024 | Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | Winner | ||
| 2024 | Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State | Knopf | Finalist | ||
| 2024 | Blood Farm: The Explosive Big Pharma Scandal that Altered the AIDS Crisis | Shortlist | |||
| 2024 | and Zusha Elinson | American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15 | Shortlist | ||
| 2024 | ' | Shortlist | |||
| 2025 | By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land | Harper | Winner | ||
| 2025 | and Stefan Timmermans | ' | Crown | Finalist | |
| 2025 | Homeland: The War on Terror in American Life | Crown | Shortlist | ||
| 2025 | Bringing Ben Home: A Murder, a Conviction, and the Fight to Redeem American Justice | Penguin Random House | Shortlist | ||
| 2025 | We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky: The Seductive Promise of Microfinance | Metropolitan | Shortlist |