Finalist: If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran, by Carla Power (Henry Holt)
A perceptive account of a year spent reading the Quran, displaying grace, subtlety and humane intellect as antidotes to rampant Islamophobia.
Winners
Prize Winner in General Nonfiction in 2016:
Joby Warrick
A deeply reported book of remarkable clarity showing how the flawed rationale for the Iraq War led to the explosive growth of the Islamic State.
General Nonfiction
Finalists
Nominated as finalists in General Nonfiction in 2016:
Ta-Nehisi Coates
A powerful book that passionately and bleakly propounds the hazards faced by black men coming of age in America.
The Jury
The Jury
Douglas A. Blackmon(Chair)*
author, executive producer and host, University of Virginia's American Forum; and contributor
Susan Faludi*
journalist and author
Louise Kiernan
associate professor of journalism
Winners in General Nonfiction
Elizabeth Kolbert
An exploration of nature that forces readers to consider the threat posed by human behavior to a world of astonishing diversity.
Dan Fagin
A book that deftly combines investigative reporting and historical research to probe a New Jersey seashore town's cluster of childhood cancers linked to water and air pollution.
Gilbert King
A richly detailed chronicle of racial injustice in the Florida town of Groveland in 1949, involving four black men falsely accused of rape and drawing a civil rights crusader, and eventual Supreme Court justice, into the legal battle.
2016 Prize Winners
William Finnegan
A finely crafted memoir of a youthful obsession that has propelled the author through a distinguished writing career.
T.J. Stiles
A rich and surprising new telling of the journey of the iconic American soldier whose death turns out not to have been the main point of his life. (Moved by the Board from the Biography category.)
Peter Balakian
Poems that bear witness to the old losses and tragedies that undergird a global age of danger and uncertainty.
Viet Thanh Nguyen
A layered immigrant tale told in the wry, confessional voice of a "man of two minds" -- and two countries, Vietnam and the United States.