J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize
The J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize is an annual award in the amount of $10,000 given to a book that exemplifies, "literary grace, a commitment to serious research and social concern.” The prize is given by the Nieman Foundation and by the Columbia University School of Journalism.
Established in 1998, the Lukas Prize Project consists of three awards:
- The J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize
- The Mark Lynton History Prize
- The J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award
Winners and Shortlisted Authors
In the list below, winners are listed first in the gold row, followed by the other nominees. Any finalists are marked with an asterisk. Note that shortlists were announced only starting in 2016; previously they would just announce winners and any finalists.| Year | Author | Title | Publisher |
| 1999 | Henry Mayer | All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery | - |
| 2000 | Witold Rybczynski | A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century | - |
| 2001 | David Nasaw | The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst | - |
| 2002 | Diane McWhorter | ' | - |
| 2003 | Samantha Power | "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide | - |
| 2004 | David Maraniss | They Marched into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967 | - |
| 2005 | Evan Wright | Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War | - |
| 2006 | Nate Blakeslee | Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town | - |
| 2007 | Lawrence Wright | The Looming Tower: Al Quaeda and the Road to 9/11 | - |
| 2008 | Jeffrey Toobin | ' | - |
| 2009 | Jane Mayer | The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals | - |
| 2010 | David Finkel | The Good Soldiers | - |
| 2011 | Eliza Griswold | The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam | Farrar, Straus & Giroux |
| 2011 | Jefferson Cowie* | Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class | New Press |
| 2011 | Paul Greenberg* | Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food | Penguin Press |
| 2011 | Siddhartha Mukherjee* | ' | Scribner |
| 2012 | Daniel J. Sharfstein | The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White | Viking Press |
| 2012 | Manning Marable* | ' | Viking Press |
| 2013 | Andrew Solomon | ' | Scribner |
| 2013 | Cynthia Carr* | Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz | Bloomsbury |
| 2014 | Sheri Fink | ' | Crown Publishers |
| 2014 | Jonathan M. Katz* | The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster | Palgrave Macmillan |
| 2015 | Jenny Nordberg | The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan | Crown Publishers |
| 2015 | Joshua Davis* | Spare Parts: Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the American Dream | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2016 | Susan Southard | ' | Viking Penguin |
| 2016 | Adam Briggle | A Field Philosopher's Guide to Fracking: How One Texas Town Stood Up to Big Oil and Gas | Liveright |
| 2016 | Kathryn J. Edin & H. Luke Shaefer | $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
| 2016 | Dale Russakoff* | The Prize: Who's in Charge of America's Schools? | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
| 2016 | Stephen Witt | ' | Viking Penguin |
| 2017 | Gary Younge | ' | Nation Books |
| 2017 | Arlie Russell Hochschild | Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning On the American Right | The New Press |
| 2017 | Nancy Isenberg | ' | Viking |
| 2017 | Jane Mayer | ' | Doubleday |
| 2017 | Zachary Roth* | The Great Suppression: Voting Rights, Corporate Cash, and the Conservative Assault on Democracy | Crown |
| 2018 | Amy Goldstein | ' | Simon & Schuster |
| 2018 | Nate Blakeslee | American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West | Crown |
| 2018 | Jessica Bruder* | Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century | W.W. Norton & Company |
| 2018 | Lauren Markham | The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants And the Making of an American Life | Crown |
| 2018 | Helen Thorpe | The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom | Scribner |
| 2019 | Shane Bauer | Penguin Press | |
| 2019 | Howard Blum | In the Enemy's House: The Secret Saga of the FBI Agent and the Code Breaker Who Caught the Russian Spies | HarperCollins |
| 2019 | Lauren Hilgers* | Patriot Number One: American Dreams in Chinatown | Crown |
| 2019 | Chris McGreal | American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts | PublicAffairs |
| 2019 | Sarah Smarsh | Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth | Scribner |
| 2020 | Alex Kotlowitz | An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago | Nan A. Talese/Doubleday |
| 2020 | Emily Bazelon* | Charged: The Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration | Random House |
| 2020 | Jennifer Berry Hawes | Grace Will Lead Us Home: The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness | St. Martin’s Press |
| 2020 | Jodie Adams Kirshner | Broke: Hardship and Resilience in a City of Broken Promises | St. Martin’s Press |
| 2020 | Margaret O'Mara | The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America | Penguin Press |