Ned Blackhawk’s ‘The Rediscovery of America’ is a nominee for $10,000 history prize

By HILLEL ITALIE AP National Writer

Ned Blackhawk’s “The Rediscovery of America,” winner last fall of a National Book Award, is a finalist for a history honor presented by the J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project.

Blackhawk’s account of Native Americans over the past five centuries is among five nominees for the Mark Lynton History Prize, a $10,000 award given for work which “combines intellectual distinction with felicity of expression.” The other books cited were Gary J. Bass’ “Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia”; Jonathan Eig’s biography of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., “King: A Life”; Dylan C. Penningroth’s “Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights” and Yepoka Yeebo’s “Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World.”

Finalists for the Lukas Book Prize, also worth $10,000, are Kerry Howley’s “Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State”; Cara McGoogan’s “Blood Farm: The Explosive Big Pharma Scandal that Altered the AIDS Crisis”; Cameron McWhirter’s and Zusha Elinson’s “American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15”; Joe Sexton’s “The Lost Sons of Omaha: Two Young Men in an American Tragedy” and Dashka Slater’s “Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed.”

The Lukas Book Prize is given for a book which demonstrates “literary grace, commitment to serious research and original reporting.”

The Lukas prize project also announced the shortlist for the Lukas Work-In-Progress Awards, for which two winners each receive $25,000 to “aid in the completion of a significant work of nonfiction on a topic of American political or social concern.”

The nominees are Lorraine Boissoneault’s “Body Weather: Notes on Illness in the Anthropocene”; Alice Driver’s “The Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America’s Largest Meatpacking Company”; Ranita Ray’s “Violent Schools: Slow Death in the American Classroom”; Jessica Slice’s “Unfit Parent: On the Barriers and Brilliance of Raising Kids While Disabled and Chronically Ill” and Nilo Tabrizy and Khadijah Heydari’s “For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran’s Women-Led Uprising.”

Winners will be announced March 19. The Lukas prizes, named for the late author and investigative journalist, were founded in 1998. They are co-administered by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard and sponsored by the family of the late historian and businessman Mark Lynton.

Previous winners have included Robert Caro, Isabel Wilkerson and Jill Lepore.