2009 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize Winner
Jane Mayer
The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals (Doubleday)
Judges’ Citation
The Dark Side is the one indispensable narrative, as yet, of what really happened when the George W. Bush administration decided to use torture as a weapon in the war on terror. Coaxing top-secret information in defiance of a clamped-down White House, the New Yorker writer Jane Mayer infiltrated the furthest shadowy reaches of the intelligence community to reveal in shocking, meticulous detail how the government’s highest officials insisted that torture was necessary to strengthen national security. Mayer’s intrepid reporting on the story forcefully revealed the price paid by the United States for abandoning its first principles in the fight against terrorism, making this gracefully told chronicle of governmental misconduct a fitting heir to the classic investigative reporting of J. Anthony Lukas.
Bio
Jane Mayer is the co-author of two best-selling narrative non-fiction books, Landslide: The Unmaking of the President, 1984-1988, and Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, both of which received glowing reviews and were book-of-the-month-club selections, and the latter of which was a finalist for the National Book Award. She is a Washington-based staff writer for The New Yorker, specializing in political and investigative reporting. Before that, she was a senior writer and front page editor for The Wall Street Journal, as well as the Journal's first female White House correspondent. She lives in Maryland with her husband and daughter.
Judges for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize
David Michaelis, Patricia O’Toole and Walter Shapiro.