2002 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winners & Finalists

BIOGRAPHY

Winner: Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. 3 (Alfred A. Knopf)

Finalists:

Gioconda Belli, The Country under My Skin: A Memoir of Love and War (Alfred A. Knopf)

Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (Viking)

T.J. Stiles, Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf)

Claire Tomalin, Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self (Alfred A. Knopf)


CURRENT INTEREST

Winner: Judith Levine, Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex (University of Minnesota Press)

Finalists:

Timothy Ferris, Seeing in the Dark: How Backyard Stargazers Are Probing Deep Space and Guarding Earth from Interplanetary Peril (Simon & Schuster)

Nicolaus Mills and Kira Brunner (editors), The New Killing Fields: Massacre and the Politics of Intervention (Basic Books)

Kevin Phillips, Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich (Broadway Books)

Samantha Power, “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide (Basic Books)


FICTION

Winner: Ian McEwan, Atonement: A Novel (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)

Finalists:

Peter Cameron, The City of Your Final Destination (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Aleksandar Hemon, Nowhere Man (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)

Kate Jennings, Moral Hazard: A Novel (Fourth Estate/HarperCollins)

Joanna Scott, Tourmaline: A Novel (Little, Brown and Company)


HISTORY

Winner: Michael B. Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oxford University Press)

Finalists:

Philip Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America (Random House)

Robert Harms, The Diligent: A Voyage through the Worlds of the Slave Trade (Basic Books)

Gregg Herken, Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller (A John Macrae Book/Henry Holt)

Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 (Alfred A. Knopf)


MYSTERY/THRILLER

Winner: George P. Pelecanos, Hell to Pay: A Novel (Little, Brown and Company)

Finalists:

Stephen L. Carter, The Emperor of Ocean Park (Alfred A. Knopf)

Tod Goldberg, Living Dead Girl: A Novel (Soho Press)

Henning Mankell, One Step Behind [translated from the Swedish by Ebba Segerberg] (The New Press)

Scott Turow, Reversible Errors (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)


POETRY

Winner: Cynthia Zarin, The Watercourse: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf)

Finalists:

Terrance Hayes, Hip Logic (Penguin Books)

John Koethe, North Point North: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins Publishers)

J.D. McClatchy, Hazmat: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf)

Harryette Mullen, Sleeping with the Dictionary (University of California Press)


SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Winner: Brenda Maddox, Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA (HarperCollins Publishers)

Finalists:

Deborah Blum, Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection (Perseus Publishing)

Judith Hooper, Of Moths and Men: An Evolutionary Tale, the Untold Story of Science and the Peppered Moth (W.W. Norton)

Mark Kurlansky, Salt: A World History (Walker and Company)

Richard Preston, The Demon in the Freezer: A True Story (Random House)


YOUNG ADULT FICTION

Winner: M.T. Anderson, Feed (Candlewick Press)

Finalists:

Kate Banks, Dillon Dillon (Frances Foster Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Sarah Dessen, This Lullaby: A Novel (Viking/Penguin Young Readers Group)

E.R. Frank, America: A Novel (A Richard Jackson Book/Atheneum Books for Young Readers)

Joyce Carol Oates, Big Mouth & Ugly Girl (HarperTempest/HarperCollins)


THE ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION

Winner: Arthur Phillips, Prague: A Novel (Random House)

Finalists:

Jay Basu, The Stars Can Wait: A Novel (Henry Holt and Company)

Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated: A Novel (Houghton Mifflin Company)

Nicole Krauss, Man Walks into a Room (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)

Hari Kunzru, The Impressionist (Dutton/Penguin Group (USA))