Los Angeles Times Book Prize: biography

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: The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of the Bondwoman's Narrative, by Gregg Hecimovich

2022: G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century, by Beverly Gage

2021: Burning Boy: The Life and Work of Stephen Crane, by Paul Auster

2020: Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck, by William Souder

2019: Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century, by George Packer

2018: Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, by David W. Blight

2017: Henry David Thoreau, A Life, by Laura Walls

2016: Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939, by Volker Ullrich

2015: Listening to Stone: The Art and Life of Isamu Noguchi, by Hayden Herrera

2014: Napoleon: A Life, by Andrew Roberts

2013: Bolivar: American Liberator, by Marie Arana

2012: The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, by Robert Caro

2011: Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned, by John A. Farrell

2010: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, by Laura Hillenbrand

2009: Dorothy Lange: A Life Beyond Limits, by Linda Gordon

2008: Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching, by Paula J. Giddings

2007: Young Stalin, by Simon Sebag

2006: Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, by Neal Gabler

2005: Matisse the Master: A life of Henri Matisse, the Conquest of Colour, 1909-1954, by Hilary Spurling

2004: de Kooning: An American Master, by Mark Stevens and Annalen Swan

2003: American Empire: Roosevelt’s Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization, by Neil Smith

2002: Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. 3, by Robert A. Caro

2001: Theodore Rex, by Edmund Morris

2000: Jefferson Davis, American, by William J. Cooper, Jr.

1999: Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette, by Judith Thurman

1998: Lindbergh, by A. Scott Berg

1997: Whittaker Chambers: A Biography, by Sam Tanenhaus

1996: Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir, by Frank McCourt

1995: Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949, by Doris Lessing

1994: Shot in the Heart, by Mikal Gilmore

1993: Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer, by John Mack Faragher

1992: Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume One, 1884-1993, by Blanche Wiesen Cook

1991: Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of Harold L. Ickes, 1874-1952, by  T.H. Watkins

1990: A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt, by Geoffrey C. Ward

1989: This Boy’s Life: A Memoir, by Tobias Wolff

1988: Nora: The Real Life of Molly Bloom, by Brenda Maddox

1987: Hemingway, by Kenneth S. Lynn

1986: Alexander Pope: A Life, by Maynard Mack

1985: Solzhenitsyn, by Michael Scammell

1984: The Nightmare of Reason, by Ernst Pawel

1983: The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House, by Seymour Hersh

1982: Waldo Emerson: A Biography, by Gay Wilson Allen

1981: Mornings on Horseback, by David McCullough