Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard · award year

J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize Project 2019

The 2019 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize Project went to American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment by Shane Bauer (J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize) and The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke by Jeffrey C. Stewart and The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War by Andrew Delbanco (Mark Lynton History Prize). 5 books were finalists across 2 categories.

Winners

J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize

  1. American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishmentsource (opens in a new tab)

Mark Lynton History Prize

  1. The New Negro: The Life of Alain Lockesource (opens in a new tab)
  2. The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil Warsource (opens in a new tab)

Finalists

J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize

  1. Patriot Number One: American Dreams in Chinatownsource (opens in a new tab)

Mark Lynton History Prize

  1. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedomsource (opens in a new tab)

About the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize Project

Covers two book categories of the Lukas Prize Project, 2006-2025: the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the Mark Lynton History Prize. The Work-in-Progress awards are skipped because they fund unfinished books. Year is the award year named in each announcement (books published the previous calendar year). Levels are Winner and Finalist as named in the announcements; 2019 had two Lynton winners (Delbanco and Stewart). Pre-announcement shortlists, published in some recent years, are not included. Sources are the Nieman Foundation's yearly press releases linked from its Lukas Prize page; journalism.columbia.edu/lukas returns 403 to scripts. Nieman has no 2007 release, and archive.org was offline, so 2007 uses Legal History Blog's verbatim repost of Columbia's 2007 announcement. The summary table on the Nieman Lukas page has errors (wrong titles for 2020 and 2025, a duplicated 2023 row), so the per-year releases were used instead. Titles printed in capitals in the releases are given in title case. Spelling fixes from the releases: Siddhartha Mukherjee (release: Siddartha), Melissa Fay Greene (blog: Faye), Claude Lévi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory (release: 'in His Laboratory'). The Looming Tower uses the published spelling Al-Qaeda (announcement: Al Quaeda).

Organization: Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. Years are award years, which can differ from publication years. Official site (opens in a new tab)

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