Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest

The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest, established in 1980, is a category of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Works are eligible during the year of their first US publication in English, though they may be written originally in languages other than English.

Recipients

Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest winners and finalists

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
1980	Harrison Salisbury	Without Fear or Favor	Winner	[1]
1981	Jacobo Timerman	Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number	Winner	[1]
1982	Jonathan Schell	The Fate of the Earth	Winner	[1]
1983	Walker Percy	Lost in the Cosmos	Winner	[1]
1984	Jane Jacobs	Cities and the Wealth of Nations	Winner	[1]
1985	Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton	Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life	Winner	[1]
1986	Joseph Lelyveld	Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White	Winner	[1]
1987	Richard Dawkins	The Blind Watchmaker	Winner	[1]
1988	William Greider	Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country	Winner	[1]
1989	Taylor Branch	Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963	Winner	[1]
1990	O. B. Hardison, Jr.	Disappearing through the Skylight: Culture and Technology in the Twentieth Century	Winner	[1]
	Vaclav Havel and Paul Wilson	Disturbing the Peace: A Conversation with Karel Huizdala	Finalist	[2]
	Rian Malan	My Traitor’s Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience
	Rick Atkinson	The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of West Point’s Class of 1966
	Kevin Phillips	The Blind Watchmaker
1991	E. J. Dionne, Jr.	Why Americans Hate Politics: The Death of the Democratic Process	Winner	[1]
	Shelby Steele	The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America	Finalist	[3]
	Daniel Yergin	The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power
	Nicholas Lemann	The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America
	Alan Ehrenhalt	The United States of Ambition: Politicians, Power, and the Pursuit of Office
1992	Francis Fukuyama	The End of History and the Last Man	Winner	[1]
	Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall	Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics	Finalist	[4]
	James Davison Hunter	Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America
	James B. Stewart	Den of Thieves
	Pico Iyer	The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto
1993	Peter Skerry	Mexican Americans: The Ambivalent Minority	Winner	[1]
	Doris May Lessing	African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe	Finalist	[5]
	Randy Shilts	Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military
	Paul Kennedy	Preparing for the Twenty-First Century
	David Brock	The Real Anita Hill
1994	Henry Kissinger	Diplomacy	Winner	[1]
	Harry V. Jaffa	Original Intent and the Framers of the Constitution: A Disputed Question	Finalist	[6]
	Brent Staples	Parallel Time: Growing Up in Black and White
	James Q. Wilson	The Moral Sense
	Katie Roiphe	The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism on Campus
1995	Gregory Howard Williams	Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black	Winner	[1]
	Michael J. Piore	Beyond Individualism: How Social Demands of the New Identity Groups Challenge American Political and	Finalist	[7]
	Nancy Abelmann and John Lie	Blue Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots
	Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur	Growing Up With a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps
	Jeffrey Abramson	We, the Jury: The Jury System and the Ideal of Democracy
1996	Peter Maass	Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War	Winner	[1]
	Jonathan Harr	A Civil Action	Finalist	[8]
	Fox Butterfield	All God’s Children: The Bosket Family and the American Tradition of Violence
	Richard Kluger	Ashes to Ashes: America’s Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris
	John Hockenberry	Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs, and Declarations of Independence
	David Quammen	The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions
	Evan Thomas	The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA
	Marc Parent	Turning Stones: My Days and Nights with Children at Risk
1997	Anne Fadiman	The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures	Winner	[1]
	Jon Krakauer	Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster	Finalist	[9]
	Bernard Lefkowitz	Our Guys: The Glen Ridge Rape and the Secret Life of the Perfect Suburb
	Randall Kennedy	Race, Crime, and the Law
	Daniel Harris	The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture
1998	Philip Gourevitch	We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda	Winner	[1]
	Russ Rymer	American Beach: A Saga of Race, Wealth, and Memory	Finalist	[10]
	Cynthia Gorney	Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars
	William Finnegan	Cold New World: Growing Up in a Harder Country
	Cristina Rathbone	On the Outside Looking In: A Year in an Inner-City High School
1999	Mitchell Duneier with Ovie Carter (photographer)	Sidewalk	Winner	[1]
	Leila Ahmed	A Border Passage: From Cairo to America—A Woman’s Journey	Finalist	[11]
	Richard A. Posner	An Affair of State: The Investigation, Impeachment, and Trial of President Clinton
	Mark Bowden	Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War
	Joshua Hammer	Chosen By God: A Brother’s Journey
2000	Frances FitzGerald	Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War	Winner	[1]
	Patrick Tierney	Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon	Finalist	[12]
	S.L. Price	Pitching Around Fidel: A Journey into the Heart of Cuban Sports
	Ian Buruma	The Missionary and the Libertine: Love and War in East and West
	Sherwin B. Nuland	The Mysteries Within: A Surgeon Explores Myth, Medicine, and the Human Body
2001	Barbara Ehrenreich	Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America	Winner	[13]
	Stanley Cohen	States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering	Finalist	[14]
	Ann Crittenden	The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued
	John W. Dean	The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment That Redefined the Supreme Court
	Ron Powers	Tom and Huck Don’t Live Here Anymore
2002	Judith Levine	Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex	Winner	[1]
	Timothy Ferris	Seeing in the Dark: How Backyard Stargazers Are Probing Deep Space, and Guarding Earth from Interplanetary Peril	Finalist	[15]
	Nicolaus Mills and Kira Brunner (editors)	The New Killing Fields: Massacre and the Politics of Intervention
	Kevin Phillips	Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich
	Samantha Power	A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide
2003	Ross Terrill	The New Chinese Empire - And What It Means for the United States	Winner	[1]
	Carlo Rotella	Cut Time: An Education at the Fights	Finalist	[16]
	Anthony Swofford	Jarhead: A Marine’s Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles
	Jon Krakauer	Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
	Gerald Posner	Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11
2004	Evan Wright	Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America and the New Face of American War	Winner	[1]
	Edward Conlon	Blue Blood	Finalist	[17]
	Michael Dirda	Bound to Please
	Karen Armstrong	The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness
	Ann Patchett	Truth & Beauty: A Friendship
2005	Anthony Shadid	Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War	Winner	[18]
	Kurt Eichenwald	Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story	Finalist	[19]
	Steve Bogira	Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse
	John Updike	Still Looking: Essays on American Art
	Jonathan Harr	The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece
2006	Ian Buruma	Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance	Winner	[20][21]
	Rajiv Chandrasekaran	Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone	Finalist	[22]
	Terri Jentz	Strange Piece of Paradise
	Alicia Drake	The Beautiful Fall: Lagerfeld, Saint Laurent, and Glorious Excess in 1970s Paris
	Douglas Brinkley	The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast
2007	Elizabeth D. Samet	Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point	Winner	[1]
	Ishmael Beah	A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier	Finalist	[23]
	Tom Bissell	The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam
	Ronald Brownstein	The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America
	Naomi Klein	The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
2008	Barton Gellman	Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency	Winner	[24][25]
	Jill Bolte Taylor	My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey	Finalist	[26]
	Steve Coll	The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century
	Jane Mayer	The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals
	Dexter Filkins	The Forever War
2009	Dave Eggers	Zeitoun	Winner	[27]
	Dave Cullen	Columbine	Finalist	[28]
	Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn	Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
	Tracy Kidder	Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness
	T.R. Reid	The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care
2010	Michael Lewis	The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine	Winner	[29][30]
	Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera	All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis	Finalist	[31]
	Patti Smith	Just Kids
	Jonathan Alter	The Promise: President Obama, Year One
	Sebastian Junger	War
2011	Daniel Kahneman	Thinking, Fast and Slow	Winner	[32]
	Ioan Grillo	El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency	Finalist	[33]
	Alex Bellos	Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything
	Anatol Lieven	Pakistan: A Hard Country
	Seth Mnookin	The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear
2012	Katherine Boo	Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum	Winner	[34][35]
	Jim Sterba	Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds	Finalist	[36]
	Karen Elliott House	On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines—and Future
	Steve Coll	Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power
	Jake Tapper	The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor
2013	Sheri Fink	Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital	Winner	[37][38]
	Charlie LeDuff	Detroit: An American Autopsy	Finalist	[39]
	Lawrence Wright	Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief
	Barry Siegel	Manifest Injustice: The True Story of a Convicted Murderer and the Lawyers Who Fought for His Freedom
	David Finkel	Thank You for Your Service
2014	Jeff Hobbs	The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League	Winner	[40][41]
	Atul Gawande	Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End	Finalist	[42]
	Bryan Stevenson	Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
	Matt Taibbi	The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap
	Héctor Tobar	Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free
2015	Sarah Chayes	Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security	Winner	[1]
	Joe Domanick	Blue: The LAPD and the Battle to Redeem American Policing	Finalist	[43]
	Sandy Tolan	Children of the Stone: The Power of Music in a Hard Land
	Sam Quinones	Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic
	Stephen Witt	How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century
2016	Svetlana Alexievich with Bela Shayevich (trans.)	Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets	Winner	[44]
	Robert F. Worth	A Rage for Order: The Middle East in Turmoil, from Tahrir Square to ISIS	Finalist	[45]
	Ben Rawlence	City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp
	Jane Mayer	Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
	Matthew Desmond	Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
2017	Nancy MacLean	Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America	Winner	[46]
	James Forman Jr.	Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America	Finalist	[47]
	Rick Wartzman	The End of Loyalty: The Rise and Fall of Good Jobs in America
	Lauren Markham	The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life
	Ta-Nehisi Coates	We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy
2018	Francisco Cantu	The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches From the Border	Winner	[48]
2019	Emily Bazelon	Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration	Winner	[49][50][51]
	Mark Arax	The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California	Finalist	[49][50]
	Ronan Farrow	Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators
	Dina Nayeri	The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You
	Rachel Louise Snyder	No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us
2020	Isabel Wilkerson	Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents	Winner	[52]
	Brittany K. Barnett	A Knock at Midnight: A Story of Hope, Justice, and Freedom	Finalist	[53]
	Karla Cornejo Villavicencio	The Undocumented Americans
	Christine Montross	Waiting for an Echo: The Madness of American Incarceration
	Jacob Soboroff	Separated: Inside an American Tragedy
2021	Adam Schiff	Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could	Winner	[54]
	Andrea Elliott	Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City	Finalist	[55]
	Heather McGhee	The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together
	Reuben Jonathan Miller	Halfway Home: Race, Punihsment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration
	Evan Osnos	Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury
2022	Dahlia Lithwick	Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America	Winner	[56]
	Anand Giridharadas	The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy	Finalist	[56]
	Sarah Kendzior	They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent
	Luke Mogelson	The Storm is Here: An American Crucible
	Dorothy Roberts	Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families — and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World
2023	Roxanna Asgarian	We Were Once A Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America	Winner	[57]
	Bettina L. Love	Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal	Finalist	[57]
	Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson	American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15
	Christina Sharpe	Ordinary Notes
	Raja Shehadeh	We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir