J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award

The J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, established in 1999, is a literary award "given annually to aid in the completion of a significant work of nonfiction on a topic of American political or social concern."^[1] The prize is given by the Nieman Foundation and by the Columbia University School of Journalism^[1][2] and is intended to "assist in closing the gap between the time and money an author has and the time and money that finishing a book requires.^[3]

Every year, one or two award winners receive an award of at least $25,000,^[4] and a finalist may receive a $5,000 award.^[5][3] Shortlisted books, introduced in 2016, receive no monetary award.^[6]

Recipients

Titles listed below are the named titles in the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Awards documents. Because the books are listed as in-progress, the book titles may have changed after publication. When applicable, the published book has been linked.

Award winners and finalists^[7]

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
1999	Kevin Coyne	The Best Years of Their Lives: One Town’s Veterans and How They Changed the World	Winner
2000	James Tobin	Work of the Wind: A Remarkable Family, an Overlooked Genius, and the Race for Flight	Winner
	Larry Tye		Finalist
	Laura Bridgman
2001	Max Holland	A Need to Know: Inside the Warren Commission	Winner
	Elinor Langer		Finalist
2002	Jacques Leslie	On Dams	Winner
	Harry Bruinius		Finalist
	Richard Steven Street
2003	Suzannah Lessard	Mapping the New World: An Inquiry into the Meaning of Sprawl	Winner
	Orlando Figes		Finalist
	Steven Stoll
2004	John Bowe	Slavery Inc.	Winner
	Eyal Press		Finalist
	Beryl Satter
2005	Joan Quigley	Home Fires	Winner
	Amy Bach		Finalist
	Steven Greenhouse
2006	Laura Claridge	Emily Post and the Rise of Practical Feminism	Winner	[8]
	Bruce Barcott		Finalist
	Dudley Clendinen
2007	Robert Whitaker	Twelve Condemned to Die: Scipio Africanus Jones and The Struggle for Justice That Remade a Nation	Winner	[9]
	Michael Punke		Finalist
2008	Michelle Goldberg	The Means of Reproduction	Winner
	Lyanda Lynn Haupt		Finalist
	Cecilia Balli
2009	Judy Pasternak	Yellow Dirt: The Betrayal of the Navajos	Winner	[10]
2010	Jonathan Schuppe	Ghetto Ball: A Coach, His Team, and the Struggle of an American City	Winner
	David Philipps		Finalist
2011	Alex Tizon	Big Little Man: The Asian Male at the Dawn of the Asian Century	Winner	[4]
	Joe Mozingo	The Fiddler on Pantico Run	Finalist	[4]
	Florence Williams	Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History	Finalist	[4]
2012	Jonathan M. Katz	The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster	Winner
	Susan Southard		Finalist
2013	Beth Macy	Factory Man	Winner
	Jim Robbins		Finalist
2014	Adrienne Berard	When Yellow Was Black: The untold story of the first fight for desegregation in Southern schools	Winner
	Yochi J. Dreazen		Finalist
2015	Dan Egan	Liquid Desert: Life and Death of the Great Lakes	Winner
	Heather Ann Thompson		Finalist
2016	Steve Luxenberg	Separate: A Story of Race, Ambition and the Battle That Brought Legal Segregation to America	Winner	[11]
	Blaire Briody		Finalist	[11]
	Sasha Issenberg		Shortlist
	Steve Oney
	Meredith Wadman
2017	Christopher Leonard	Kochland	Winner	[5][12]
	Helen Thorpe	The Newcomers	Finalist	[5][12]
	Marie Mutsuki Mockett		Shortlist
	Eyal Press
	Richard Steven Street
2018	Chris Hamby	Soul Full of Coal Dust: The True Story of An Epic Battle for Justice	Winner	[13][14]
	Rachel Louise Snyder	No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us
	Arthur Holland Michel	Eyes in the Sky	Shortlist	[15][16]
	Katherine E. Standefer	Lightning Flowers
	Susan Vinocour	Nobody's Child: A Tragedy, a Trial, and the History of the Insanity Defense
2019	Maurice Chammah	Let the Lord Sort Them: Texas and the Death Penalty's Rise and Fall in America	Winner	[17]
	Steven Dudley	Mara: The Making of the MS13
	Amelia Pang	Made in China: How an Engineer Ended Up in a Chinese Gulag Making Products for Kmart	Shortlist	[18]
	Lauren Sandler	This Is All I Got: One Woman’s Desperate Year in the New Gilded Age
	Sarah Schulman	Let the Record Show: ACT UP and the Enduring Relationship of AIDS
2020	Bartow J. Elmore	Seed Money: Monsanto’s Past and the Future of Food	Winner	[19]
	Shahan Mufti	American Caliph: The True Story of the Hanafi Siege, America’s First Homegrown Islamic Terror Attack
	Michelle Nijhuis	Beloved Beasts: The Story of Conservation and the Fight to Protect Life on Earth	Shortlist	[20][21]
	Sarah Schulman	Let the Record Show: A Political History of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, ACT UP, NY 1987-1993
	Lawrence Tabak	Foxconned: How the Mindless Pursuit of Good Jobs Destroys Homes, Wastes Billions and Enriches the Few
2021	Emily Dufton	Addiction, Inc.: How the Corporate Takeover of America’s Treatment Industry Created a Profitable Epidemic	Winner	[22][23]
	Casey Parks	Diary of a Misfit
	David Dennis Jr.	The Movement Made Us	Shortlist	[24][25]
	Channing Gerard Joseph	House of Swann: Where Slaves Became Queens — and Changed the World
	Elizabeth Rush	The Mother of All Things: On Climate Change, the Stories We Tell, and a Journey to the Edge of Antarctica
2022	Roxanna Asgarian	We Were Once a Family: The Hart Murder-Suicide and the System Failing Our Kids	Winner	[26][27][28]
	May Jeong	The Life: Sex, Work, and Love in America
	Robert Fieseler	American Scare: A Cold War in the Sunshine State	Finalist	[29][30][31]
	Benjamin Herold	Disillusioned: How the Suburbs and Their Schools Undermine The American Dream
	Suki Kim	The Prince and the Revolutionary: Children of War
2023	Jesselyn Cook	The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family	Winner	[32]
	Mike Hixenbaugh	Uncivil: One Town's Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New Battle for America's Schools
	Rebecca Kelliher		Shortlist	[32]
	Megan Kimble
	Jessica Pishko
2024	Lorraine Boissoneault	Body Weather: Notes on Illness in the Anthropocene	Winner	[33]
	Alice Driver	The Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America’s Largest Meatpacking Company

See also

• J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize
• Mark Lynton History Prize