J. Anthony Lukas Prize - Columbia University Graduate School of ...

J. Anthony Lukas Prize
By Fran Dauth
More than two decades ago, shortly after J. Anthony Lukas won the Pulitzer Prize for
General Nonfiction for “Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three
American Families,” one reviewer wrote:
“The great strength of the book is its use of multiple viewpoints, its ability to apply the
methods of modern literature to our understanding of political events.”
In other words, Lukas used narrative—storytelling—to explain seismic events in America.
Lukas died in 1997. A year later, his widow, colleagues and close friends established the
Lukas Book Prize Project, offering three distinct book prizes to champion his dedication to
the craft of narrative nonfiction.
On May 1 they gathered for the 14th time to bestow the 2012 Lukas Prize Project Awards,
and to remember Lukas and his commitment to creating camaraderie and community for
nonfiction writers similar to that enjoyed by fiction writers.
Held at the Lippman House, home to the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard,
Nieman Curator Ann Marie Lipinski remembered that when she was a Nieman fellow in
1989-1990 one of the highlights was spending long afternoons with Lukas.
Nick Lemann, dean of Columbia’s School of Journalism, which co-sponsors the Lukas
awards with the Nieman Foundation, recalled that Lukas once paid him $20 a day as a
researcher when he, too, was at Harvard. Lukas, Lemann, said, was a mentor and eventually
a close friend. The two organized a nonfiction conference in 1991.
Lemann noted the annual awards session always includes a discussion with the winners
about their work as a tribute to Lukas’ desire for a community of nonfiction writers.
Before the awards were presented, Lemann also paid tribute to Tony Lukas’ widow, Linda
Healy, a longtime book editor, who has led the project since its inception. She and co-chair
Arthur Gelb, a former managing editor of the New York Times and an author, are stepping
down as part of a board rotation system.

MSNBC political commentator and author Jonathan Alter is the new chairman of the Lukas
Book Project Prize Board. Alter, who has written a number of books on presidents and
politics, including “The Promise: President Obama: Year One” and “The Defining Moment:
FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope,” spent 28 years as an editor and columnist
at Newsweek.
Lemann also recognized the family of the late Mark Lynton, a business executive and the
author of “Accidental Journey: A Cambridge Internee’s Memoir of World War II.” Lynton
was an avid proponent of writing history, and his family underwrites all the awards that
comprise the Lukas Project. “This is all made possible by the Lynton family,” Lemann said.
Alter bestowed the $10,000 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize to Daniel J. Sharfstein, a professor
of law at Vanderbilt University, for “The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the
Secret Journey from Black to White,” published by Viking Press.
“The book makes real the fact that, not so long ago, American citizens were forced into
hiding their lineage and identity just to live free in this democracy, the perils and sense of
loss, not matter which road they chose, and the price being paid even to this day by their
descendents, and by extension, all of us,” the judges said.
One finalist was named, the late Manning Marable, for “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention,”
also published by Viking Press.
Sophia Rosenfeld, the Mark Lynton History winner, accepted the $10,000 prize for
“Common Sense: A Political History,” published by Harvard University Press. Rosenfeld,
who teaches history at the University of Virginia, was cited for her “extraordinary, wideranging,
and original work that takes on the unexpected topic of common sense (what
everyone knows), gives it a history, and shows how central it is for the evolution of our
modern understanding of politics.”
The judges named two finalists in the Lynton category: Michael Willrich, for “Pox: An
American History,” published by Penguin Press, and Craig Harliner for “Conversions: Two
Family Stories from the Reformation and Modern America,” published by Yale University
Press.
The J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award was presented to Jonathan M. Katz for
“The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a
Disaster,” to be published by Palgrave Macmillan. The Work-in-Progress award comes with
a check for $30,000 to underwrite completion of the book. Katz, who says he was the only
full-time foreign correspondent in Haiti on Jan. 12, 2010, when the earthquake struck, left
the Associated Press to complete his book.
“Katz is a great storyteller who enmeshes the reader in a lively web of history, incident, and
examples of humanity pushing through disaster, hard luck, iniquity, and triumph to muck it
up all over again,” the judges said.
The judges named one finalist: Susan Southard for “Nagasaki,” to be published by Viking
Penguin.

After awarding the prizes, Alter led a panel discussion that enabled each author to talk about
how their work, rooted in the past, had implications for present-day politics and policy, be it
defining who is a citizen, how to assist after the next disaster or even listening to presidential
campaigning.
Sophia Rosenfeld, for example, said manipulation of the phrase “common sense” can be
seen in the political argument of both the Tea Party faction and Occupy Wall Street
movement.