2003 Lukas Prize Winners

Samantha Power

Entry title: Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (Basic Books)

Awarded: 2003, The J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize ($10,000)

The prize jurors noted: "Samantha Power writes with passion and precision about America's response to genocide in the 20th century. Combining the skills of the journalist, historian, political analyst and activist, she revisits the tragic history of Armenia, Cambodia, Europe in World War II, Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, Srebrenica, and Kosovo. Her research is prodigious, the power of her presentation striking. A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide compels a re-examination of American foreign policy in the murderous 20th century and invites reflection upon the complex conflicts that are already defining the new one."

Honorable Mention

Two finalists were also noted: Derrick Jensen, The Culture of Make Believe (Context Books) and Charles Bowden, Down by the River (Simon & Schuster). Jurors noted that The Culture of Make Believe weaves journalism, history, personal anecdote, philosophy and cultural criticism into a passionate and provocative meditation on the nexus of racism, genocide, environmental destruction and corporate malfeasance, where civilization meets its discontents. Down by the River is both bold and deep in trying to drive into the darkness of lies and danger that guard and surround the drug trade on both sides of the river between the United States and Mexico."

Jurors

Jurors for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize were Diane McWhorter (Carry Me Home), winner of the 2002 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and 2002 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction; David Nasaw (The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst), 2001 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize winner and chair of the doctoral history program at the City University of New York and Richard Reeves (President Nixon: Alone in the White House), a syndicated columnist.

Suzannah Lessard

Entry title: Mapping the New World: An Inquiry into the Meaning of Sprawl, to be published by Dial Press

Awarded: 2003, The J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award ($45,000)

Judges noted: "Ms. Lessard's work-in-progress starts with a provocative premise and promises to make a thoughtful contribution to our understanding of the environmental issues of our time. Much environmental writing begins and ends as a threnody for the wounded earth. But Lessard takes the built environment seriously as a human artifact, one conceived for many motives, created by many means, and teeming with diverse consequences and meanings. Writing with equal insight about the world that is passing and the one that is replacing it, she addresses the political, social, technical, and aesthetic dimensions of her subject with sympathy, intelligence, and brio."

Honorable Mention

A finalist was also noted: Bruce D. Butterfield, The Mill, to be published by HarperCollins. Jurors noted that the work-in-progress "promises to be a rich and energetic portrait of a colorful and admirable individual, as well as an instructive parable for the de-industrialization of the region that pioneered America's industrial revolution, and a textured exploration of American working-class life in the era of globalization."

Jurors

Jurors for the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award were Katherine Boo, a reporter for The Washington Post and a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur Foundation grant; Nicholas Dawidoff (The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg and The Fly Swatter: How My Grandfather Made His Way in the World), a writer and regular contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine and The American Scholar; David M. Kennedy (Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War 1929-1945), winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Kennedy is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History at Stanford University.

Robert Harms

Entry title: The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade

Awarded: 2003, The Mark Lynton History Prize

The prize jurors noted: "At the heart of Robert Harms' extraordinary book is an extraordinary document: the journal of Robert Durand, who served as First Lieutenant on the French slave ship the Diligent during its voyage to West Africa, to Martinique, and thence back home to France in 1731-32. It is one of the most complete and descriptive of such documents in existence, and Harms has made the most of it in a vivid and thought-provoking narrative history. His tale centers on the Diligent's voyage, but Harms sets it in a remarkably rich context, drawing on impeccable research and expertise to explain everything from the economics of the slave trade, to the political divisions of West Africa, to the nature of plantation society in the West Indies. Along the way, in a series of wonderfully told digressions, he presents such remarkable characters as John Law, the Scottish adventurer, who became the effective Prime Minister of France, and Bulfinch Lambe, an Englishman who became a slave of the King of Dahomey. But he never loses sight of the most important, if unnamed characters in the story: the 256 Africans who were forcefully taken from the world they knew, crammed into the Diligent's hold under inhuman conditions, and shipped across an ocean to a life of miserable and dangerous servitude. Fourteen did not survive the voyage. One of the most tragic stories in history has been brought to life in Robert Harms' talented hands."

Honorable Mention

Two finalists were also noted: Orlando Figes, Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia (Metropolitan Books), and Steven Stoll, Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth-Century America (Hill and Wang).

Jurors

Jurors for the Mark Lynton History Prize were Roy Rosenzweig (The Park and the People: A History of Central Park), chair of the department of history at George Mason University; David A. Bell (The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism, 1680-1800), professor of history at Johns Hopkins University, and Michael Kazin (America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s), professor of history at Georgetown University.