Pulitzer Prize Winners Announced
The 2012 Pulitzer Prizes were just announced. The following were the winners in the book categories.
Annotations are from the press release.
Fiction
Winner:
NO Award — the first time since 1977. No explanation was offered beyond the statement, “The three books were fully considered, but in the end, none mustered the mandatory majority for granting a prize, so no prize was awarded.”
Finalists:
Train Dreams by Denis Johnson (Macmillan/ FSG) — “a novella about a day laborer in the old American West, bearing witness to terrors and glories with compassionate, heartbreaking calm.”
Swamplandia! by Karen Russell (Alfred A. Knopf) — “an adventure tale about an eccentric family adrift in its failing alligator-wrestling theme park, told by a 13- year-old heroine wise beyond her years”
The Pale King by the late David Foster Wallace (Little, Brown and Company) — “a posthumously completed novel, animated by grand ambition, that explores boredom and bureaucracy in the American workplace.”
General Nonfiction
Winner:
The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, by Stephen Greenblatt (Norton) — “a provocative book arguing that an obscure work of philosophy, discovered nearly 600 years ago, changed the course of history by anticipating the science and sensibilities of today.”
Finalists:
One Hundred Names For Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing, by Diane Ackerman (Norton) — “a resilient author’s account of caring for a stricken husband, sharing fears and insights as she explores neurology and ponders the gift of words.”
Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, by Mara Hvistendahl (Public Affairs) — “an evocative, deeply researched book probing the causes and effects of a global imbalance in the gender ratio.”
Winners and finalists in Biography, History and Poetry, after the jump:
Biography
Winner:
George F. Kennan: An American Life, by John Lewis Gaddis (Penguin Press) — “an engaging portrait of a globetrotting diplomat whose complicated life was interwoven with the Cold War and America’s emergence as the world’s dominant power.”
Finalists:
Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution,” by Mary Gabriel (Hachette/ Little, Brown)– “an adventure tale about an eccentric family adrift in its failing alligator-wrestling theme park, told by a 13- year-old heroine wise beyond her years.”
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, by the late Manning Marable (Penguin/Viking) — moved to the Biography category by the Board
History
Winner:
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, by the late Manning Marable (Penguin/Viking) — “an exploration of the legendary life and provocative views of one of the most significant African-Americans in U.S. history, a work that separates fact from fiction and blends the heroic and tragic.”
Finalists:
Empires, Nations & Families: A History of the North American West, 1800-1860, by Anne F. Hyde (University of Nebraska Press) — a fresh work tracing how people created families and conducted business in a vast, fur-trading region newly part of an expanding United States
The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden, by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan (RH/Ballantine) — “a painstaking look at a catastrophic act of terrorism and the nagging questions that have swirled around it.”
Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America, Richard White (Norton) — “a myth-shattering book that shows how reckless but influential railroad corporations in the late 19th century often profited by failure as well as success.”
Poetry
Winner:
Life on Mars, by Tracy K. Smith (Graywolf Press) — “a collection of bold, skillful poems, taking readers into the universe and moving them to an authentic mix of joy and pain.”
Finalists:
Core Samples from the World, by Forrest Gander (New Directions) — “a compelling work that explores cross-cultural tensions in the world and digs deeply to identify what is essential in human experience.”
How Long, by Ron Padgett (Coffee House Press) — “an enchanting collection of poems that juggle delight, wit and endless fascination with language.”