Staff Picks
2024 Pulitzer Prizewinners
- Bland L.
- Monday, May 06
Collection
The 2024 Pulitzer Prizes have just been announced. Check out these winners and finalists in the categories of fiction, history, biography, memoir/autobiography, poetry, and general nonfiction.
Larry McMurtry
A Life
Published in 2023
"A biography of the late Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and screenwriter Larry McMurtry from New York Times bestselling author Tracy Daugherty. In over forty books, in a career that spanned over sixty years, Larry McMurtry staked his claim as a superior chronicler of the American West, and as the Great Plains' keenest witness since Willa Cather and Wallace Stegner. Larry McMurtry: A Life traces his origins as one of the last American writers who had direct contact with this country's pioneer traditions. It follows his astonishing career as bestselling novelist, Pulitzer-Prize winner, author of the beloved Lonesome Dove, Academy-Award winning screenwriter, public intellectual, and passionate bookseller. A sweeping and insightful look at a versatile, one-of-a-kind American writer, this book is a must-read for every Larry McMurtry fan"-- Provided by publisher.
King
A Life
Published in 2023
"The first full biography in decades, "King" mixes revelatory and exhaustive new research with brisk and accessible storytelling to forge the definitive life for our times"-- Provided by publisher.
No Right to an Honest Living
The Struggles of Boston's Black Workers in the Civil War Era
Published in 2023
"Before, during, and after the US Civil War, Boston's Black workers were barred from the skilled trades, factory work, and public-works projects. In Boston, as in cities across the North, white abolitionists focused virtually all their energies on the plight of enslaved Black Southerners, while refusing to address the challenges faced by their Black neighbors. The author presents inspiring and heart-wrenching stories of people-from day laborers and domestics to physicians and lawyers-who ingeniously forged careers in the face of monumental obstacles"-- Provided by publisher.
Cobalt Red
How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives
Published in 2023
"An unflinching investigation reveals the human rights abuses behind the Congo's cobalt mining operation-and the moral implications that affect us all. Cobalt Red is the searing, first-ever exposé of the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by cobalt mining, as told through the testimonies of the Congolese people themselves. Activist and researcher Siddharth Kara has traveled deep into cobalt territory to document the testimonies of the people living, working, and dying for cobalt. To uncover the truth about brutal mining practices, Kara investigated militia-controlled mining areas, traced the supply chain of child-mined cobalt from toxic pit to consumer-facing tech giants, and gathered shocking testimonies of people who endure immense suffering and even die mining cobalt. Cobalt is an essential component to every lithium-ion rechargeable battery made today, the batteries that power our smartphones, tablets, laptops, and electric vehicles. More than 70 percent of the world's supply of cobalt is mined in the Congo, often by peasants and children in sub-human conditions. Billions of people in the world cannot conduct their daily lives without participating in a human rights and environmental catastrophe in the Congo. In this stark and crucial book, Kara argues that we must all care about what is happening in the Congo-because we are all implicated"-- Provided by publisher.
The Country of the Blind
A Memoir at the End of Sight
Published in 2023
"A witty, winning, and revelatory personal narrative of the author's transition from sightedness to blindness and his quest to learn all he can about blindness as a distinct and rich culture all its own We meet Andrew Leland as he's suspended in the strange liminal state of the soon-to-be blind: He's midway through his life with retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that ushers those who live with it from complete sightedness to complete blindness over a period of years, even decades. He grew up with full vision, but starting in his teenage years, his sight began to degrade from the outside in, such that he now sees the world as if through a narrow tube. Soon-but without knowing exactly when-he will likely have no vision left. Full of apprehension but also dogged curiosity, Leland embarks on a sweeping exploration of the state of being that awaits him: not only the physical experience of blindness but also its language, internal debates, politics, and customs. He also negotiates his changing relationships with his wife and son, and with his own sense of self, as he moves from sighted to semi-sighted to blind, from his mainstream, "typical" life to one with a disability. Part memoir, part historical and cultural investigation, The Country of the Blind represents Leland's determination not to merely survive this transition, but to grow from it-to seek out and revel in that which makes blindness enlightening. His story reveals essential lessons for all of us, from accepting uncertainty and embracing change to connecting with others across difference. Thought-provoking and brimming with warmth and humor, The Country of the Blind is at once a deeply personal journey and an intellectually exhilarating tour of a way of being that most of us have never paused to consider-and from which we have much to learn"-- Provided by publisher.
Wednesday's Child
Stories
Published in 2023
"A new collection--about loss, alienation, aging, and the strangeness of contemporary life--by the award-winning and inimitable author of The Book of Goose"-- Provided by publisher.
Same Bed Different Dreams
A Novel
Published in 2023
"March 1919. Far-flung Korean patriots establish the Korean Provisional Government to protest the Japanese occupation of their country. This government-in-exile proves mostly symbolic, its petitions ignored by heads of state as Korea's nationhood is erased. After Japan's defeat in World War II, the KPG dissolves and civil war erupts, resulting in the North-South split that remains today. But what if the KPG still existed now, today-working toward a unified Korea, secretly harnessing the might of a giant tech company to further its aims? That's the outrageous premise of Same Bed Different Dreams, which spins Korean history, American pop culture, and our tech-fraught lives into an extraordinary and unforgettable novel. Weaving together three distinct narrative voices, Park twists reality like a kaleidoscope, forging connections and reinterpreting the past. Early on we meet Soon Sheen, who works at the sprawling international technology company GLOAT, and comes into possession of an unfinished book authored by the KPG. The manuscript is a mysterious, revisionist history, tying famous names and obscure bit players to the KPG's grand project. This strange manuscript links together figures from architect-poet Yi Sang to Jack London to Marilyn Monroe. M*A*S*H is in here, too, and the Moonies, and a history of violence extending from the assassination of President McKinley to the Soviet downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007"-- Provided by publisher.
Night Watch
Published in 2023
"In 1874, in the wake of the Civil War, eleven-year-old ConaLee and her mother arrive at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia. They're delivered to the hospital's entrance by Papa--an abusive veteran who forces himself into their lives--after ConaLee's mother, who hasn't spoken in a year, grows even more withdrawn. Before he departs, Papa assigns them new identities and demands that ConaLee introduce herself as her mother's nurse--not her daughter--so they'll both be admitted and allowed to stay. There, far from family, their beloved neighbor, Dearbhla, and the home they know, ConaLee will care for her mother and try to reclaim their lives. Years earlier, ConaLee's father left for the war before she was born and never returned. After suffering a life-threatening headwound in battle, he couldn't remember his name, his family, or where he came from. Forced to start over, he takes the name of the doctor who gave him a second life, and ventures back into the world looking for work and the truth about his past"-- Provided by publisher.
Liliana's Invincible Summer
A Sister's Search for Justice
Published in 2023
"In the early hours of July 16, 1990, Liliana Rivera Garza was murdered by her abusive ex-boyfriend. A life full of promise and hope, cut tragically short, Liliana's story instead became subsumed into Mexico's dark and relentless history of domestic violence. With Liliana's case file abandoned by a corrupt criminal justice system, her family, including her older sister Cristina, was forced to process their grief and guilt in private, without any hope for justice. A memoir decades in the making, Liliana's Invincible Summer tells a singular yet universally resonant story: that of a spirited, wondrously romantic young woman who tried to survive in a world of increasingly normalized gendered violence. It traces the story of her childhood, her early romance with a handsome--but insecure and possessive--older man, through the exhilarating weeks leading up to that fateful July morning, a summer when Liliana loved, thought, and traveled more widely and freely than she ever had before"-- Provided by publisher.
The Best Minds
A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions
Published in 2023
"When the Rosens moved to New Rochelle in 1973, Jonathan Rosen and Michael Laudor seemed destined to become inseparable. The boys, both children of college professors, grew up on the same street in intellectually vibrant homes shaped by ideas, liberal Jewish culture, the trauma of the Holocaust, and a shared love of basketball and standup comedy. But the two best friends were also keen competitors bearing the same great expectations, and when Michael and Jonathan both got into Yale, they seemed set to ascend to the heights of the American meritocratic elite. Leaving Jonathan behind, Michael blazed through college in three years, graduating summa cum laude and landing a top-flight consulting job for far more money than their parents had ever made. But all wasn't as it seemed. One day, Jonathan received the fateful call: Michael had suffered a serious psychotic break and was institutionalized at a New York City psychiatric hospital where he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He would stay there for nine months before transitioning to a halfway house. Facing the prospect of a life spent bagging groceries, Michael decided to play the one card left to him: just before his break, he had been accepted to Yale Law School, and now, against all odds, he planned to enroll. Still struggling mightily with schizophrenia, Michael made it through the top law school in the country. His extraordinary story soon made the front page of the New York Times; an agent sold his memoir to a major publisher for a large sum; Ron Howard swept in to acquire film rights, with Brad Pitt set to star. It was all a dream come true for Michael and his tirelessly supportive girlfriend Carrie. But then, the unimaginable happened: in the grip of an unshakeable paranoid fantasy, Michael stabbed Carrie to death with a kitchen knife. To this day, Michael Laudor remains confined to a maximum-security forensic hospital in upstate New York. The Best Minds is Jonathan Rosen's brilliant and heartbreaking account of what happened to Michael Laudor, and why. Exploring the dramatic transformation of American culture and of society's relationship to mental illness in the second half of the twentieth century, this is a story about the power and limits of the bonds of family, friendship, and community, the lure of the American dream and the promise of academic achievement. At times tender and hilarious, and at times harrowing and almost unbearably sad, The Best Minds is an extreme version of a story that is tragically familiar to all too many. In the hands of a writer of Jonathan Rosen's gifts and dedication, its significance will echo widely"-- Provided by publisher.
Tripas
Poems. Georgia Review Books Ser
Published in 2023
With Tripas, Brandon Som follows up his award-winning debut with a book of poems built out of a multicultural, multigenerational childhood home, in which he celebrates his Chicana grandmother, who worked nights on the assembly line at Motorola, and his Chinese American father and grandparents, who ran the family corner store. Enacting a cómo se dice poetics, a dialogic poem-making that inventively listens to heritage languages and transcribes family memory, Som participates in a practice of mem(oir), placing each poem's ear toward a confluence of history, labor, and languages, while also enacting a kind of "telephone" between cultures. Invested in the circuitry and circuitous routes of migration and labor, Som's lyricism weaves together the narratives of his transnational communities, bringing to light what is overshadowed in the reckless transit of global capitalism and imagining a world otherwise-one attuned to the echo in the hecho, the oracle in the órale.
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama
Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy
Published in 2023
Five-year-old Milad Salama is excited for the school trip to a theme park on the outskirts of Jerusalem. On the way, his bus collides with a semitrailer in a horrific accident. His father, Abed, gets word of the crash and rushes to the site. The scene is chaos - the children have been taken to different hospitals in Jerusalem and the West Bank; some are missing, others cannot be identified. Abed sets off on an odyssey to learn Milad's fate. It is every parent's worst nightmare, but for Abed it is compounded by the maze of physical, emotional, and bureaucratic obstacles he must navigate because he is Palestinian. He is on the wrong side of the separation wall, holds the wrong ID to pass the military checkpoints, and has the wrong papers to enter the city of Jerusalem. Abed's quest to find Milad is interwoven with the stories of a cast of Jewish and Palestinian characters whose lives and histories unexpectedly converge: a kindergarten teacher and a mechanic who rescue children from the burning bus; an Israeli army commander and a Palestinian official who confront the aftermath at the scene of the crash; a settler paramedic; ultra-Orthodox emergency service workers; and two mothers who each hope to claim one severely injured boy. Immersive and gripping, this is an indelibly human portrait of the Jewish-Palestinian struggle that offers a new understanding of the tragic history and reality of one of the most contested places on earth. -- Adapted from publisher's description.
Fire Weather
A True Story from a Hotter World
Published in 2023
"In May 2016, the city of Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada, burned to the ground, forcing 88,000 people to flee their homes. It was the largest evacuation ever of a city in the face of a forest fire, raising the curtain on a new age of increasingly destructive wildfires. This book is a suspenseful account of one of North America's most devastating forest fires-and a stark exploration of our dawning era of climate catastrophes"-- Provided by publisher.
American Anarchy
The Epic Struggle Between Immigrant Radicals and the US Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century
Published in 2023
"From the Gilded Age to the first Red Scare of 1919-1920, the American anarchist movement clashed with some of the nation's most powerful institutions and individuals. Anarchists never comprised more than a small minority the labor movement. Their vision of a world without states, borders, laws, organized religion, or private property proved far too radical for even the most open-minded liberals of their day--particularly when some anarchists advocated terrorist violence. By the turn of the twentieth century, in the face of this challenge to American values and political traditions, American leaders chose to suspend those very values to destroy the anarchist movement. They vilified anarchism as an "alien" contagion, launched an unprecedented buildup of government surveillance, called for draconian restrictions on free speech, and used immigration laws to expel non-citizen anarchists from the nation. This decades-long "war on anarchy" in turn inspired the emergence of the modern civil liberties movement, grounded in Constitutional freedoms of speech and due process. Seeking to defend anarchist thinkers who denounced the liberal idea of the rule of law, this movement breathed new life into the Bill of Rights and spurred debates about the proper limits of government power that continue today. In American Anarchy, award-winning historian Michael Willrich weaves the gripping tale of these anarchists, their allies, and their enemies, showing how they together transformed the United States. Willrich vividly recaptures the radical political world of early twentieth-century New York City--the nation's chief port of arrival for new immigrants and its preeminent financial and industrial center. New York was home to the infamous Russian-Jewish anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman and their social network of Eastern European and Italian immigrant radicals, who championed industrial democracy, demanded reproductive freedom for women, and fought for free speech. From the start, their alien status and spectacles of protest made the anarchists targets for government officials. But when anarchists took a stand against the First World War and celebrated the Russian Revolution, the war against anarchy took on a new ferocity. To fight back, Goldman, Berkman, and their colleagues called on lawyers like the young Harry Weinberger, a night-school-educated attorney from the Lower East Side who found his calling defending radicals in criminal trials, Ellis Island deportation hearings, and before the U.S. Supreme Court, and whose work laid the groundwork for the American Civil Liberties Union. By taking the anarchists seriously as flawed but principled political actors, American Anarchy unlocks one of the great puzzles of modern U.S. history, revealing how a powerful national government and a robust conception of individual liberty emerged at the very same moment in the early twentieth century. Clear-eyed, prodigiously researched, and vividly written, it is a deeply resonant story of young radicals who would stop at nothing to change the world, and a powerful democracy willing to suspend its most fundamental freedoms for the illusion of security"-- Provided by publisher.
Master Slave Husband Wife
An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
Published in 2023
Presents the remarkable true story of Ellen and William Craft, who escaped slavery through daring, determination, and disguise, with Ellen passing as a wealthy, disabled white man and William posing as "his" slave.