Pulitzer Prize – General Nonfiction
The Pulitzer Prize has been awarded by Columbia University since 1917. The awards are given on the recommendations of a board of jurors for Journalism, Letters, Music and Drama. The awards for Letters include Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Biography or Autobiography and History. The Pulitzer in General Non-Fiction is presented for distinguished book of nonfiction by an American author, which does not qualify for any other category – below are the winners of the last decade. For more information, visit: http://www.pulitzer.org.
2007
The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright (973.931 WRIGH)
The Looming Tower may be the most riveting, informative and "heart-stopping account" yet of the men who shaped 9/11. The focus on individuals gives the book its emotional punch, but it is also a narrative bold in conception and historical sweep. Lawrence Wright conducted more than 500 interviews, from bin Laden's best friend in college to Richard A. Clarke, Saudi royalty, Afghan mujahideen and reporters for Al Jazeera. The result, while evenhanded in its analysis of the complex motives, ideals and power plays that led to 9/11, leaves few nefarious details uncovered. An abrupt ending did little to sway critics that Looming Tower is nothing less than "indispensable" reading
2006
Imperial Reckoning: the Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkins (967.62 ELKIN)
In the immediate aftermath of crushing the Mau Mau rebellion in early 1950s colonial Kenya, British authorities organized a detention-and-camp system they informally called the "Pipeline." This work, originating from the author's doctoral dissertation, describes the Pipeline, insofar as it is possible since Elkins discovered that records about the Pipeline were probably destroyed in a bonfire lit before the British granted Kenya independence in 1963. Surmounting that obstacle, Elkins recovers sufficient information about the Pipeline to condemn it wholesale. Inevitably news of incidents leaked out, igniting parliamentary rows in London, which Elkins chronicles with contained fury. Filling a previously blank page in history, Elkins' pioneering study is a crucial recording of Kenyan history in particular, and that of African decolonization in general.
2005
Ghost Wars by Steve Coll (958.104 COLL)
Coll details the secret history of the CIA's role in Afghanistan, the rise of the Taliban, the emergence of bin Laden and the failed efforts by U.S. forces to find and assassinate bin Laden in Afghanistan.
2004
Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum (365 APP)
Nearly 30 million prisoners passed through the Soviet Union's labor camps in more than 60 years of operation. This first fully documented history of the gulag, describes how, largely under Stalin's watch, a regulated, centralized system of prison labor – unprecedented in scope – gradually arose out of the chaos of the Russian Revolution.
2003
Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power (304.6 POWER)
Power, a former journalist, offers an uncompromising and disturbing examination of 20th-century acts of genocide and U.S responses to them.
2002
Carry Me Home by Diane McWhorter (976.1 MCWHO)
Carry Me Home is a dramatic account of the civil rights era's climactic battle in Birmingham, as the movement led by Martin Luther King Jr. brought down the institutions of segregation.
2001
Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert P. Bix (952.03 BIX)
Drawing on the wealth of fascinating new Japanese materials that have become available since Hirohito's death, Herbert Bix has given us a riveting portrait of the engaged, intense and complex man who stood at the very center of Japan's turbulent century of war and peace.
2000
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John W. Dower (952.04 DOWER)
MIT professor Dower offers a dazzling political and social history of how postwar Japan evolved with stunning speed into a unique hybrid of Western innovation and Japanese tradition.
1999
Annals of the Former World by John McPhee (557.3 MCPHE)
A 696-page examination of the geologic life of North America. As clearly and succinctly written as it is profoundly informed, this is our finest popular survey of geology, with narrative including not only scientific theory but also portraitures of his geologic guides.
1998
Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond (303.4 DIAMO)
Diamond, an evolutionary biologist, dismantles racially based theories and reveals the environmental factors actually responsible for history's broadest patterns. A whirlwind tour through 13,000 years of human history, beginning when Stone Age hunter-gatherers constituted the entire population.
1997
Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, The Public Health and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris by Richard Kluger (394.1 KLUGE)
Ashes to Ashes is a monumental history of the American tobacco industry.
1996
The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism by Tina Rosenburg (947 ROS)
Telling unforgettable stories of human lives caught up in the storm of political change, this is a journalist's look at four Eastern European nations as they wrestle with the crimes and everyday complicities of their Communist past.