"They say it's your birthday" - writers born on April 26

Vicente Aleixandre  (1898)
Marcus Aurelius  (121 A.D.)
David Hume (1711)

Bernard Malamud  (1914) 

William Shakespeare (baptized, 1564)

 

Los Angeles Times Book Prize: history

The Los Angeles Times has honored books annually since 1980. Currently, it does so in many categories that include, among others, biography, current interest, fiction, history, mystery/thriller, poetry, science and technology, and young adult fiction. Works are eligible regardless of the language in which they were originally published, but not until the year of their first U.S. publication in English.  The prizes are normally presented before the start of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, another annual event sponsored by the newspaper.

2023: Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century, by Joya Chatterji

2022: By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow's Legal Executioners, by Margaret A. Burnham

2021: Cuba: An American History, by Ada Ferrer

2020: Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All, by Martha S. Jones

2019: They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South, by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers

2018: Travelers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism 1919-1945, by Julia Boyd

2017: The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, by Dan Egan

2016: An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873, by Benjamin Madley

2015: Killing a King: The Assassination of a Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel, by Dan Ephron

2014: The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931, by Adam Tooze

2013: The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, by Christopher Clark

2012: America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union, by Fergus M. Bordewich

2011: Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America, by Richard White

2010: The Killing of Crazy Horse, by Thomas Powers

2009: Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance 1950–1963, by Kevin Starr

2008: Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe, by Mark Mazower

2007: Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, by Tim Weiner

2006: The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, by Lawrence Wright

2005: Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves, by Adam Hochschild

2004: Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism, by Geoffrey R. Stone

2003: An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America, by Henry Wiencek

2002: Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, by Michael B. Oren

2001: Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, by Rick Perlstein

2000: The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach, by Alice Kaplan

1999: Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, by John W. Dower

1998: The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity, by Roy Porter

1997: A People's Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution, by Orlando Figes

1996: Black Sea, by Neal Ascherson

1995: Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America, by Jackson Lears

1994: Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940, by George Chauncey

1993: New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery, by Anthony Grafton

1992: Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families under Fascism, by Alexander Stille

1991: The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America, by Nicholas Lemann

1990: The Quest for El Cid, by Richard Fletcher

1989: An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, by Neal Gabler

1988: Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, by Eric Foner

1987: The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, by Robert J. Lifton

1986: The First Socialist Society: A History of the Soviet Union from Within, by Geoffrey Hosking

1985: Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn, by Evan S. Connell

1984: The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History, by Robert Danton

1983: The Wheels of Commerce, by Fernand Braudel

1982: The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution, 1895-1980, by Jonathan D. Spence

1981: Land of Savagery/Land of Promise, by Ray Allen Billington

1980: Walter Lippmann and the American Century, by Ronald Steel

The Biblio File: images of publishers, for bibliophiles

CavanKerry Press

David Levine on writers: Alice McDermott

David Levine (1926-2009) was one of America’s most prominent illustrators during a career that spanned decades. No less an authority than Jules Feiffer described him as "the greatest caricaturist of the last half of the 20th century,” although Levine continued to work in the early years of this century as well. Levine’s subjects included himself (above) and people from many walks of life. Authors, scribes and scribblers were a big part of the mix, as these caricatures make clear. 

Lit Toons: Cartoons with a bookish bent

Tom Gauld

First Lines: Ken Follett

The small boys came early to the hanging.

The Pillars of the Earth

Ken Follett

"They say it's your birthday" - writers born on April 25

Walter De La Mare  (1873)
Dinesh D’Souza  (1961) 
James Fenton  (1949)

Ted Kooser  (1939) 
Maud Hart Lovelace  (1892) 

J. Anthony Lukas  (1933) 
Padgett Powell  (1952)

 

Los Angeles Times Book Prize: fiction

The Los Angeles Times has honored books annually since 1980. Currently, it does so in many categories that include, among others, biography, current interest, fiction, history, mystery/thriller, poetry, science and technology, and young adult fiction. Works are eligible regardless of the language in which they were originally published, but not until the year of their first U.S. publication in English.  The prizes are normally presented before the start of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, another annual event sponsored by the newspaper.

2023: Same Bed Different Dreams: A Novel, by Ed Park

2022: Solenoid, by Mircea Cartarescu

2021: In the Company of Men, by Véronique Tadjo

2020: At Night All Blood Is Black, by David Diop (Anna Moschovakis, translator)

2019: The Topeka School: A Novel, by Ben Lerner

2018: The Great Believers: A Novel, by Rebecca Makkai

2017: Exit West, by Mohsin Hamid

2016: Imagine Me Gone, by Adam Haslett

2015: The Story of My Teeth, by Valeria Luiselli

2014: The Blazing World, by Siri Hustvedt

2013: A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki

2012: Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, by Ben Fountain

2011: Luminarium, by Alex Shakar

2010: A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan

2009: A Happy Marriage, by Rafael Yglesias

2008: Home, by Marilynne Robinson

2007: Be Near Me, by Andrew O’Hagan

2006: A Woman in Jerusalem, by A. B. Yehoshua

2005: Memories of My Melancholy Whores, by Gabriel García Márquez

2004: The Master, by Colm Tóibín

2003: Train: A Novel, by Pete Dexter

2002: Atonement: A Novel, by Ian McEwan

2001: Why Did I Ever, by Mary Robison

2000: Assorted Fire Events: Stories, by David Means

1999: Freedom Song: Three Novels, by Amit Chaudhuri

1998: The Rings of Saturn, by W.G. Seabed

1997: In the Rogue Blood, by James Carlos Blake

1996: A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry

1995: The Blue Afternoon, by William Boyd

1994: Remembering Babylon, by David Malouf

1993: Pigs in Heaven, by Barbara Kingsolver

1992: Maus II, A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began, by Art Spiegelman

1991: White People, by Allan Gurganus

1990: Lantern Slides, by Edna O’Brien

1989: The Heart of the Country, by Fay Weldon

1988: Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel García Marquez

1987: Fools Crow, by James Welch

1986: The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood

1985: Love Medicine, by Louise Erdrich

1984: The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera

1983: Schindler's Ark, by Thomas Keneally

1982: A Flag for Sunrise, by Robert Stone

1981: The White Hotel, by D.M. Thomas

1980: The Second Coming, by Walker Percy

The Biblio File: images of N.E. libraries, for bibliophiles

Little Free Library, Portsmouth,Rhode Island

David Levine on writers: Philip Roth

David Levine (1926-2009) was one of America’s most prominent illustrators during a career that spanned decades. No less an authority than Jules Feiffer described him as "the greatest caricaturist of the last half of the 20th century,” although Levine continued to work in the early years of this century as well. Levine’s subjects included himself (above) and people from many walks of life. Authors, scribes and scribblers were a big part of the mix, as these caricatures make clear.