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Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
"The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It recognizes distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life, published during the preceding calendar year." Click here to visit the official website.
Pulitzer Prize
Fiction
The Underground Railroad by Call Number: FICTION WHITEHEACora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood–where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned–Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.
Finalists
- Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett
- The Sport of Kings by C.E. Morgan
History
Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy by Call Number: 365.9747 THOMPSONHistorian Heather Ann Thompson offers the first definitive telling of the Attica prison uprising, the state's violent response, and the victims' decades-long quest for justice--in time for the forty-fifth anniversary of the events.
Finalists
- Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It by Larrie D. Ferreiro
- New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America by Wendy Warren
Biography or Autobiography
The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between by From Man Booker Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Hisham Matar, a memoir of his journey home to his native Libya in search of answers to his father's disappearance. In 2012, after the overthrow of Qaddafi, the acclaimed novelist Hisham Matar journeys to his native Libya after an absence of thirty years.
Finalists
- In the Darkroom by Susan Faludi
- When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
Poetry
Olio by Call Number: 811.6 JESSPart fact, part fiction, Tyehimba Jess's much anticipated second book weaves sonnet, song, and narrative to examine the lives of mostly unrecorded African American performers directly before and after the Civil War up to World War I. Olio is an effort to understand how they met, resisted, complicated, co-opted, and sometimes defeated attempts to minstrelize them.
Finalists
- Collected Poems: 1950-2012 by Adrienne Rich
- XX by Campbell McGrath
General Nonfiction
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Call Number: 339.46 DESMONDA Harvard sociologist examines the challenge of eviction as a formidable cause of poverty in America, revealing how millions of people are wrongly forced from their homes and reduced to cycles of extreme disadvantage that are reinforced by dysfunctional legal systems.
Finalists
- In a Different Key: The Story of Autism by John Donovan & Caren Zucker
- The Politics of Mourning: Death and Honor in Arlington National Cemetery by Micki McElya
Fiction
The Sympathizer by Call Number: FICTION NGUYENWith the pace and suspense of a thriller and prose that has been compared to Graham Greene and Saul Bellow,The Sympathizer is a sweeping epic of love and betrayal. The narrator, a communist double agent, is a “man of two minds,” a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain who arranges to come to America after the Fall of Saigon, and while building a new life with other Vietnamese refugees in Los Angeles is secretly reporting back to his communist superiors in Vietnam.The Sympathizer is a blistering exploration of identity and America, a gripping espionage novel, and a powerful story of love and friendship.
Finalists
- Get in Trouble: Stories by Kelly Link
- Maud's Line by Margaret Verble
History
Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of New America by Call Number: B CUSFrom the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes and a National Book Award, a brilliant biography of Gen. George Armstrong Custer that radically changes our view of the man and his turbulent times.
Finalists
- Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War by Brian Matthew Jordan
- Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid that Avenged Pearl Harbor by James M. Scott
- The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency by Annie Jacobsen
Biography or Autobiography
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by Call Number: B FINDescribes the author's experiences as a lifelong surfer, from his early years in Honolulu through his culturally sophisticated pursuits of perfect waves in some of the world's most exotic locales.
Finalists
- Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America by T.J. Stiles
- The Light of the World: A Memoir by Elizabeth Alexander
Poetry
Ozone Journal by The title poem of Peter Balakian's Ozone Journal is a sequence of fifty-four short sections, each a poem in itself, recounting the speaker's memory of excavating the bones of Armenian genocide victims in the Syrian desert with a crew of television journalists in 2009. These memories spark others-the dissolution of his marriage, his life as a young single parent in Manhattan in the nineties, visits and conversations with a cousin dying of AIDS-creating a montage that has the feel of history as lived experience.
Finalists
- Alive: New & Selected Poems by Elizabeth Willis
- Four-Legged Girl by Diane Seuss
General Nonfiction
Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS by Call Number: 363.325 WARRICKIn a thrilling dramatic narrative, awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, Joby Warrick traces how the strain of militant Islam behind ISIS first arose in a remote Jordanian prison and spread with the unwitting aid of two American presidents.
Fiction
All the Light We Cannot See by Call Number: FICTION DOERRA blind Parisian girl and an orphaned German boy conscripted by the Nazis for his radio skills meet in the chaos of the American bombing of a French coastal resort.
Finalists
History
Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People by Encounters at the Heart of the World concerns the Mandan Indians, iconic Plains people whose teeming, busy towns on the upper Missouri River were for centuries at the center of the North American universe. In this extraordinary book, Elizabeth A. Fenn retrieves their history by piecing together important new discoveries in archaeology, anthropology, geology, climatology, epidemiology, and nutritional science. Her boldly original interpretation of these diverse research findings offers us a new perspective on early American history, a new interpretation of the American past.
Finalists
- An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America by Nick Bunker
- Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckert
Biography or Autobiography
The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe by From National Book Award finalist David I. Kertzer comes the gripping story of Pope Pius XI’s secret relations with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. This groundbreaking work, based on seven years of research in the Vatican and Fascist archives, including reports from Mussolini’s spies inside the highest levels of the Church, will forever change our understanding of the Vatican’s role in the rise of Fascism in Europe.
Finalists
Poetry
Digest by From Epicurus to Sam Cook, the Daily News to Roots, Digest draws from the present and the past to form an intellectual, American identity. In poems that forge their own styles and strategies, we experience dialogues between the written word and other art forms. Within this dialogue we hear Ben Jonson, we meet police K-9s, and we find children negotiating a sense of the world through a father's eyes and through their own.
Finalists
- Compass Rose by Arthur Sze
- Reel to Reel by Alan Shapiro
General Nonfiction
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Call Number: 576.84 KOLBERTProvides a moving account of the disappearances occurring all around us and traces the evolution of extinction as concept, from its first articulation by Georges Cuvier in revolutionary Paris up through the present day. The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy, compelling us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.
Fiction
The Goldfinch by Call Number: FICTION TARTTA young boy in New York City, Theo Decker, miraculously survives an accident that takes the life of his mother. Alone and abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by a friend's family and struggles to make sense of his new life. In the years that follow, he becomes entranced by one of the few things that reminds him of his mother: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the art underworld.
History
The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia by Call Number: 975.503 TAYLORDrawn from new sources, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian presents a narrative that recreates the events that inspired hundreds of slaves to pressure British admirals into becoming liberators by using their intimate knowledge of the countryside to transform the war.
Finalists
Biography or Autobiography
Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by The award-winning author of The Peabody Sisters takes a fresh look at the trailblazing life of a great American heroine—Thoreau’s first editor, Emerson’s close friend, first female war correspondent, and passionate advocate of personal liberation and political freedom.
Finalists
- Jonathan Swift: His Life and World by Leo Damrosch
- Karl Marx: A Nineteenth Century Life by Jonathan Sperber
Poetry
3 Sections by Vijay Seshadri’s new poetry is assured and expert, his line as canny as ever. In an array of poetic forms from the rhyming lyric to the philosophical meditation to the prose essay, 3 Sections confronts perplexing divisions of contemporary life—a wayward history, an indeterminate future, and a present condition of wanting to outthink time. This is an extraordinary book, witty and vivacious, by one of America’s best poets.
Finalists
- The Big Smoke by Adrian Matejka
- The Sleep of Reason by Morri Creech
General Nonfiction
Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation by Toms River melds hard-hitting investigative reporting, a ripping scientific detective story, deep historical research and an unforgettable cast of characters into a riveting narrative about pollution, cancer, corporate avarice, and government neglect.
Fiction
The Orphan Master's Son by Call Number: FICTION JOHNSONAn epic novel and a thrilling literary discovery, The Orphan Master’s Son follows a young man’s journey through the icy waters, dark tunnels, and eerie spy chambers of the world’s most mysterious dictatorship, North Korea.
Finalists
History
Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam by Call Number: 959.7041 LOGEVALLA history of the four decades leading up to the Vietnam War offers insights into how the U.S. became involved, identifying commonalities between the campaigns of French and American forces while discussing relevant political factors.
Finalists
Biography or Autobiography
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Call Number: 944.0409 REISSExplores the life and career of Thomas Alexandre Dumas, a man almost unknown today, but whose swashbuckling exploits appear in The three musketeers and whose trials and triumphs inspired The count of Monte Cristo.
Finalists
Poetry
Stag's Leap by Call Number: 811.54 OLDSIn this wise and intimate telling--which carries us through the seasons when her marriage was ending--Sharon Olds opens her heart to the reader, sharing the feeling of invisibility that comes when we are no longer standing in love's sight; the surprising physical bond that still exists between a couple during parting; the loss of everything from her husband's smile to the set of his hip. Olds is naked before us, curious and brave and even generous toward the man who was her mate for thirty years and who now loves another woman.
Finalists
- Collected Poems by Jack Gilbert
- The Abundance of Nothing by Bruce Weigl
General Nonfiction
Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Call Number: 305.896 KINGDevil in the Grove, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, is a gripping true story of racism, murder, rape, and the law. It brings to light one of the most dramatic court cases in American history, and offers a rare and revealing portrait of Thurgood Marshall that the world has never seen before.
