Finalist: The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin , by H.W. Brands (Doubleday )

For his penetrating and enterprising reporting that exposed loopholes and inequities in the U.S. tax code, which was instrumental in bringing about reforms.

For his photograph of armed U.S. federal agents seizing the Cuban boy Elián Gonzalez from his relatives' Miami home.

For its balanced and gripping on-the-scene coverage of the pre-dawn raid by federal agents that took the Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez from his Miami relatives and reunited him with his Cuban father.