1981 winner:   The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould.
Appraisal of the origin and inherent flaws of intelligence testing. Harvard biologist Gould argues that belief in intelligence as a single, innate, measurable thing is on a par with the pseudoscientific measurement of skulls in the nineteenth century. RC 17413.

1981 winner:   A Coast of Trees by A.R. Ammons.
Focusing upon detail, these thirty-seven short, spare poems are primarily meditations on the natural world--leaves, birds, and water--a world without people. RC 19610.

1982 winner:   The Path to Power by Robert A. Caro.
The first part of a three-part political biography. This monumental volume recreates the early life of the thirty-sixth President, assembling innumerable anecdotes of his childhood, college years, and early political career to reveal the ruthlessness and complexity of his forceful personality. The author immersed himself for seven years in Johnson’s life in order to portray his Texas, his Washington, and his America. Lyndon B. Johnson biography series, book 1. RC 18676.

1982 winner:   Antarctic Traveler by Katha Pollitt.
Collection of poems offers a lyrical voice of wide range and deep resonance in which the poet is able to project herself into diverse objects and situations to portray their essence. A group of "Vegetable Poems" illuminates potatoes, onions, and eggplants, and "Five Poems from Japanese Paintings" celebrate her love of color and proportion. BR 5579.

1983 winner:   The Price of Power by Seymour M. Hersh.
A critical portrait of Kissinger that blends some old rumors with new research about foreign policy in Nixon’s secret ridden White House. The author asserts that Kissinger secretly supplied Nixon with inside information about the Paris peace talks in 1968 and, at the same time, offered damaging files on Nixon to Zbigniew Brzezinki. A controversial journalistic report. RC 19229.

1983 winner:   Minor Characters by Joyce Johnson.
A view from the periphery of the original beat generation that included Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg. Johnson's memoir records the good times, struggles, free love, drug scene, and literary experiments that blossomed in the bohemian environs of New York City and San Francisco in the 1950s. Some strong language and some descriptions of sex.
BR 5431, RC 19152.

1984 winner:   Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850-1859 by Joseph Frank.
The second volume of the biography of Fyodor Doestoevsky describes the Russian author's imprisonment in Siberian exile for anti-state activities, illness, his bad marriage, and his spiritual reassessment. Doestoevsky biography series, book 2. RC 23412.

1984 winner:   The Dead and the Living by Sharon Olds.
Direct, imagistic poems about the universal experience of death and life--both public and private. One poem is about the poet's aging grandmother, still witty and full of life; another is about her grandfather who drank, and her father who resembled him; still another is about a young girl in Russia who died of starvation in the early part of the century. Some descriptions of sex. BR 6302.

1985 winner:   Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families by J. Anthony Lukas.
An account of Boston’s fight for school integration in the 1960s and 1970s that reads like a novel. Reports the effects of racial tensions on a black family in a Roxbury housing project, an Irish-American family, and a WASP family in the South End. RC 22967.

1985 winner:   Henry James by Leon Edel.
Condensation of Edel’s classic, prize-winning, five-volume biography of the American author that includes new material on James’s youth and his sexual dilemma. RC 23819.

1985 winner:   The Triumph of Achilles by Louis Gluck.
Collection of eloquent and fiercely honest poems that deal with death, life, loss, and the sense of doom at the borders of erotic experience. BR 6473.

1986 winner:   War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War by John W. Dower.
A history of the war of words that turned the Pacific theater in World War II into a racial contest, pitting the "evil American beasts" against the "yellow Jap monkeys." Dower tells a sad story of mutual racial antagonism that led headlong into a brutal war of extermination. RC 25306.
                       
1986 winner:   Tombee: Portrait of a Cotton Planter by Theodore Rosengarten.
A study in two parts that captures the life and times of a Southern slaveholder. Thomas B. Chaplin, heir to a fortune in land and slaves, was twenty-two when he became master of the 376-acre Tombee Plantation on St. Helena Island, South Carolina. There, with a wife and four children, he lived extravagantly and sank into debt and opium addiction. RC 25447.

1986 winner:   Wild Gratitude by Edward Hirsch.
Collection of elegiac and celebratory lyrics that dwell upon the past, either in tributes to the departed or as nostalgic vignettes from the poet’s own vanished youth. Included are meditations on the lives of poet Christopher Smart, composer Charles Ives, the elderly residents "In a Polish Home for the Aged," and the inhabitants of Leningrad during the ghastly war years of 1941-1943. RC 25629.

1987 winner:   The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes.
A comprehensive account for the general reader of the world-shattering discoveries of nuclear physics. Focuses on the people behind the microscopes and in front of the blackboards, beginning with Ernest Rutherford and proceeding through such legendary scientists as Bohr and Oppenheimer. BR 7283, RC 25626.

1987 winner:   Chaucer by Donald R. Howard
A copious account of Geoffrey Chaucer’s life, work, and historical context based on critical readings of Chaucer’s verse from the minor poems to the "Canterbury Tales." This is also the story of how a vintner’s son married his way into the right court circles, and of some of the influences affecting England’s first major poet. RC 26900.

1987 winner:   Flesh and Blood by C.K. Williams.
A contemporary poet noted for his meditative and conversational tone presents a collection of over one hundred eight-line poems that take an intense and concentrated look at the brutal realities of everyday life. RC 27470.

1988 winner:   Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63 by Taylor Branch.
Wide-ranging chronicle of a turbulent decade when the civil-rights movement launched its determined, nonviolent battle for America’s social conscience and soul. Branch focuses on the period that begins with Martin Luther King’s 1954 arrival as pastor of Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and ends with the assassination of President Kennedy. America in the King Years series, book 1. RC 29759.
                       
1988 winner:   Oscar Wilde by Richard Ellman.
A sympathetic yet critical study of the nineteenth-century Irish author, which utilizes factual and anecdotal details. We see Wilde as the brilliant and outrageous Oxford student, the "aesthete" in America and pre-Raphaelite London, the conqueror of Belle-Epoque Paris, the taunter of bourgeois society, the husband of Constance Lloyd, and the lover of Lord Alfred Douglas. BR 7306, RC 27498.

1989 winner:   The Broken Cord by Michael Dorris.
In 1971, twenty-six-year-old Dorris, a doctoral candidate, a college teacher, and a member of the Modoc tribe, decided to become a single parent. He was offered the chance to adopt three-year-old Adam, a Sioux who had been diagnosed as mentally retarded. It was discovered later that Adam suffers from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Dorris, who later married, describes the problems attendant upon raising a child with FAS. Includes Adam’s story. RC 33717.

1989 winner:   A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt by Geoffrey C. Ward.
The author continues his study begun in Before the Trumpet: Young Franklin Roosevelt. This volume covers the years 1905-1928, beginning with Franklin and Eleanor's honeymoon, and ending with his return to politics after a seven-year struggle to recover from infantile paralysis. The book deals mostly with his character and personality. RC 32300.

1990 winner:   The Content of Our Character by Shelby Steele.
In his collection of nine essays, Steele, a professor of English at San Jose State University in California, looks back at his growing up in an integrated society, and examines his own preconceived ideas about race. He discusses the relationship between blacks and whites in schools, offices, social situations, and politics and challenges black Americans to have pride in their achievements. RC 32017.

1990 winner:   Means of Ascent by Robert A. Caro.
The second installment in Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson focuses on his brief military service, his acquisition of wealth through his Austin radio station (KTBC), and the 1948 election, won by only eighty-seven votes, which sent Johnson to the U.S. Senate and changed history. Lyndon B. Johnson biography series, book 2. RC 30837.

1991 winner:   Backlash by Susan Faludi.
Near the end of the twentieth century, the message to American women seems to be: "You may be free and equal now, but you have never been more miserable." Faludi, of the "Wall Street Journal," looks at the effects of the women’s rights movement, and shows how the media, the advertising world, and Hollywood have promoted the idea that women should be unhappy.
RC 34053.

1991 winner:   Patrimony by Philip Roth.
Herman Roth, eighty-six, is dying of a massive brain tumor. As Philip takes up the story of his father’s life, the reader is given a picture of a widowed, retired insurance salesman who will not go gently into the night. Philip accompanies his father through each stage of his final struggle and recollects family stories that give us a glimpse into early twentieth-century Jewish immigrant life.
RC 32467.

1991 winner:   Heaven and Earth by Albert Goldbarth.
Goldbarth’s language covers the gamut--from history and science to lust and comic-book expressions-- and samples are gathered in this selection of poems under the headings "Talk", "Love", "Others", and "Physics". Some strong language. RC 34884.

1992 winner:   Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean.
Montana, 1949. The profession of smoke jumping--parachuting to trench around forest fires--is less than a decade old. A crew of young smoke jumpers lands for a routine job in Mann Gulch. Within two hours the fire escalates into a "blowup," and thirteen men are killed. Author Maclean spent the last years of his life investigating the fateful fire and the accusations that the crew leader's actions caused the deaths. RC 35639.
                       
1992 winner:   Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her World  by Carol Brightman.
The life of an American novelist, literary critic, journalist, and social activist who died in 1989. Brightman examines biographical facts, fictional transformations and the opinions of others to account for McCarthy’s often contradictory reputation as a writer and as a person. RC 36987.

1992 winner:   Collected Shorter Poems 1946-1991 by Hayden Carruth.
Most of the poems in this collection were written over nearly fifty years, although it includes more than thirty poems from the late twentieth century. Carruth’s admiration for a wide variety of styles is reflected in lyrics, sonnets, meditations, haiku, and satire. His subjects range from love, death, nature, music, sex, war, and people and places in New England to wood smoke. Some strong language. RC 35785.

1993 winner:   The Land Where the Blues Began by Alan Lomax.
When the author, a southern white ethnomusicologist, began to record the sounds of poor African-American people living in the Mississippi Delta in the 1930s, segregation created a barrier that had the effect of keeping black music intact. Lomax’s recollections, interspersed with the voices of the people who shared stories and songs with him, create a first hand account of the blues in its natural habitat. RC 38149.

1993 winner:   Genet by Edmund White.
Biography tracing the life of Jean Genet, who began life as a foster child; served time in jail for stealing, vagrancy, and prostitution; and became one of France’s best-known writers. White analyzes the biographical aspects in Genet’s novels and plays to show how Genet cultivated an image combining literary celebrity with the menace of the tough ex-convict. Descriptions of sex and some strong language. RC 38239.

1993 winner:   My Alexandria by Mark Doty.
In this award winning book of poetry, selected by Philip Levine for the National Poetry Series, Doty uses the ancient city as a metaphor for his search for an ideal place of beauty and light. Although he sees demolished buildings, panhandlers, dementia, and mortality, he finds the substance of poetry in a flower garden, in stories in a book, in innocent children, and in the power of hope, as in an unopened advent calendar. RC 37942.

1994 winner:   The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War by Lynn H. Nicholas.
Describes the Nazis’ attack on European artworks, documenting the pillage of entire countries and the destruction of “degenerate” art. Nicholas also tells how world leaders united to protect masterpieces while fighting the enemy, how ordinary people and experts made heroic efforts to save their treasures, and how the allies sought to restore works to their rightful owners. RC 40324.

1994 winner:   Shot in the Heart by Mikal Gilmore.
A writer for Rolling Stone magazine, Mikal is also a younger brother of the late Gary Gilmore, who insisted on being executed after he killed two men. Now, when only Mikal and his oldest brother, Frank, remain, Mikal explains the true history of his family and "how its webwork of dark secrets and failed hopes helped create the legacy that, in part, became (his) brother’s impetus to murder." Descriptions of sex, strong language, and some violence. RC 39437.

1994 winner:   Rider by Mark Rudman.
Combining verse and lyrical prose, Rudman reflects on his own coming-of-age. In loose question-and-answer style, he explores relationships with his grandfather, father, stepfather, and son and memories painted against a background of Judaic tradition. Some descriptions of sex, some violence, and some strong language. RC 56813.

1995 winner:   A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr.
Written like a novel, this true account of a liability lawsuit focuses on the plaintiffs’ attorney. Parents whose children died of leukemia retained Jan Schlichtmann, described here as flamboyant, bankrupt and tenacious. Schlichtmann spent nine years tracking the cause of the illness to bring suit against two giant corporations. Describes how justice became secondary to the legal battle. RC 41279.

1996 winner:   Bad Land: An American Romance by Jonathan Raban.
Depicts the stark, barren, world of the northern Great Plains. By the 1930s, many of the homesteaders who were enticed by the offer of free federal land to Ismay, Montana, had moved on. The author takes stock of those early settlers and relates their legacy to the lives of their independent antigovernment descendants. RC 44190.
                       
1996 winner:   Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt.
Frank McCourt recollects his "miserable Irish Catholic childhood" in the squalor of Limerick. Absent any support from his glib, but shiftless, alcoholic father, the family suffered hunger, cruelty, disease, and the death of children. McCourt recounts his story without rancor. Strong language. Frank McCourt autobiography series, book 1. BR 12543, RC 42805.
                       
1996 winner:   Sun under Wood: New Poems by Robert Hass.
In this collection of twenty poems by the 1995 U.S. poet laureate, Hass explores such themes as nature, in "Dragonflies Mating"; solitude, in "Regalia for a Black Hat Dancer"; language, in "English: An Ode"; and the fragility of human relationships, in "Faint Music". Some strong language and some descriptions of sex. BR 10828.

1997 winner:   The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman.
Born in California of Laotian (Hmong) parents, Lia suffers from epileptic seizures that began at age three months. As traditional Hmong medicine is not available, Lia's parents take her to American doctors. Neither parental love nor the doctors' sense of duty can transcend the cultural barriers and misconceptions that complicate Lia's medical care. RC 45010.

1997 winner:   Ernie Pyle’s War: America’s Eyewitness to World War II by James Tobin.
Biography of the journalist whose columns on the German bombing of London in December 1940 were immediately popular back in the United States. Provides information on Pyle's personal life and career; traces his perspective on covering the war from the ordinary soldier's viewpoint; includes quotes from his writings that ended with his death near Okinawa in April 1945. RC 47264.

1997 winner:   Black Zodiac by Charles Wright.
An anthology of twenty poems examining man’s place in the universe. In the title piece, Wright interweaves memories with descriptions of the physical world searching for meaning. BR 11995.

1998 winner:   We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families by Philip Gourevitch.
An American journalist's attempt to fathom the 1994 ethnic slaughter in Rwanda. Explains how the Hutu majority's pursuit of a new order led to the massacre of more than 800,000 people of the Tutsi minority and explores the political and psychological consequences of these atrocities. Some violence. RC 51323.

1998 winner:   A Beautiful Mind: A Biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr., Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, 1994 by Sylvia Nasar.
The life of a mathematical genius who contributed to game theory, computer architecture, the study of the universe, and the mystery of prime numbers--all before age thirty. Then schizophrenia enveloped his mind and he spent thirty more years in and out of mental hospitals before a spontaneous recovery returned him to the world of research. BR 13881, RC 47595. Also available as a descriptive video, DV 421.

1998 winner:   The Bird Catcher by Marie Ponsot.
A collection of fifty-two poems, some of which were previously published in periodicals. Grouped under four headings, each bearing the title of a poem in that section: For My Old Self; Separate, In the Swim; The Split Image of Attention; and Explorers Cry Out Unheard. BR 12632.

1999 winner:   Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior by Jonathan Weiner.
Biography of biologist Seymour Benzer, whose groundbreaking work revolutionized the study of genetics. Experimenting on fruit flies at the California Institute of Technology, Benzer and his students developed ideas about the relation between genes and behavior that had far-reaching implications for ethical and social thought as well as biology. RC 50356.

1999 winner:   The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White by Henry Wiencek.
Traces the lineage, legacy, and lives of both black and white members of the Hairston family from the American Revolution through the twentieth century. Recalls the importance of land ownership and inheritance in shaping attitudes toward marriage and kinship. Notes the acceptance between the two groups in the 1990s. RC 50321.

2000 winner:   Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover.
A journalist's account of one year spent as a corrections officer in New York state. Conover's fascination with prisons led him to become a guard. He describes his training and his year on the job, with its moments of horror and grace. Includes a brief history of Sing Sing. Strong language and some violence. RC 52863.

2000 winner:   Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert P. Bix.
Explores Emperor Hirohito’s role in twentieth-century Japanese politics and developments. Asserts that the monarch helped advance the country’s nationalistic agenda. Argues that he actively participated in developing policies guiding the Asia-Pacific war, including the Pearl Harbor campaign and negotiations when Russia attacked Manchuria. RC 52271.

2000 winner:   Carolina Ghost Woods by Judy Jordan.
Beauty of language transcends themes of death, grief, and privation set in southern landscape. RC 53229.

2001 winner:   Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper by Nicholson Baker.
Novelist and library activist Baker opposes the library practice of microfilming and then discarding old printed materials. He argues against the purported brittle-paper crisis and pleads for retaining old books and newspapers to be perused in their original form.
RC 52808.

2002 winner:   Charles Darwin by E. J. Browne.
Focuses on the second half of Darwin's life, largely dedicated to writing and publishing his theories, most notably in 1859's On the Origin of Species. Browne examines the "Darwinian Revolution" in Victorian England, subsequent public debate, and Darwin's family life. Charles Darwin biography series, book 2. RC 59280.
                       
2002 winner:   Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest by B.H. Fairchild.
Collection of prose poems from the American heartland. Author of The Art of the Lathe (RC 48111), Fairchild continues celebrating machine workers and the Kansas landscape. In "The Blue Buick: A Narrative," a college boy tells of the couple who bequeath him their car. Some strong language. RC 57862.

2003 winner:   Khrushchev: The Man and His Era by William Taubman.
Chronicles the life and times of Nikita Khrushchev, a Ukrainian peasant who rose through the Communist ranks to eventually succeed Joseph Stalin as party leader of the Soviet Union. Uses newly released archives and interviews with Khrushchev's contemporaries to explore the complexity and contradictions in the leader's character. RC 56692.

2003 winner:   Columbarium by Susan Stewart.
Nearly forty poems expressing the bond between the living and dead in voices of parent to child, lover to beloved, and mortal to the gods. Verses explore universal human truths, classical and Biblical figures, and the natural elements air, fire, earth, and water.
RC 59467.

2004 winner:   De Kooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan.
Biography of Dutch-born artist Willem de Kooning, who became a major figure in the mid-twentieth-century New York abstract expressionism scene. Explores de Kooning's bohemian habits, friendship with Gorky, financial backing from Hirshhorn and Fourcade, only marriage, and passion for painting. RC 60110.

2005 winner:   Them: A Memoir of Parents by Francine du Plessix Gray.
Memoir about the author's mother and stepfather, Russian émigrés who fled occupied Paris for New York City in 1941. Portrays Tatiana du Plessix Liberman's rise as a famous hat designer and Alexander Liberman's ascent at Conde Nast Publications. Describes the publishing and fashion scenes and her parents' glamorous lives. RC 61816.

2005 winner:   American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.
Biography of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, “the father of the atomic bomb." Chronicles his New York City upbringing, marriage to Kitty Puening, work on the Manhattan Project, and life after the 1954 Atomic Energy Commission hearings which denied Oppenheimer his security clearance for questioning the ethics of nuclear weapons. RC 61087.