J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize: nonfiction

The J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize is an annual award given to a book that exemplifies "literary grace, a commitment to serious research and social concern.” It is named for the late Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and author, J. Anthony Lukas. The award is part of the Lukas Prize Project, which consists of three awards. The Lukas Prize Project is administered by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University and the Columbia University School of Journalism.

2023: Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed, by Dashka Slater

2022: Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City, by Andrea Elliott

2021: After the Last Border: Two Families and the Story of Refuge in America, by Jessica Goudeau

2020: An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago, by Alex Kotlowitz

2019: American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment, by Shane Bauer

2018: Janesville: An American Story, by Amy Goldstein

2017: Another Day in the Death of America, by Gary Younge

2016: Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War, by Susan Southard

2015: The Underground Girls of Kabul, by Jenny Nordberg

2014: Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital, by Sheri Fink

2013: Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity, by Andrew Solomon

2012: The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White, by Daniel J. Sharfstein

2011: The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches From the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam, by Eliza Griswold

2010: The Good Soldiers, by David Finked

2009: The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, by Jane Mayer

2008: The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, by Jeffrey Toobin

2007: The Looming Tower: Al Quaeda and the Road to 9/11, by Lawrence Wright

2006: Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town, by Nate Blakeslee

2005: Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War, by Evan Wright

2004: They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967, by David Maraniss

2003: “A Problem From Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide, by Samantha Power

2002: Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution, by Diane McWhorter

2001: The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst, by David Nasaw

2000: A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century, by Witold Rybczynski

1999: All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery, by Henry Mayer