Finalist: Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 , by Stephen Kotkin (Penguin Press )
A superbly researched tour de force of pre- and post-revolutionary Russian history told through the life of Joseph Stalin.
Winners
Prize Winner in Biography in 2015:
David I. Kertzer
An engrossing dual biography that uses recently opened Vatican archives to shed light on two men who exercised nearly absolute power over their realms.
Biography
Finalists
Nominated as finalists in Biography in 2015:
Thomas Brothers
The masterfully researched second volume of a life of the musical pioneer, effectively showing him in the many milieus where he lived and worked in the 1920s and 1930s.
The Jury
The Jury
David Nasaw(Chair )
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Professor of History
Barbara Ransby
professor of African American studies, gender and women’s studies and history
Judith Thurman
biographer and staff writer
Winners in Biography
Megan Marshall
A richly researched book that tells the remarkable story of a 19th century author, journalist, critic and pioneering advocate of women's rights who died in a shipwreck.
Tom Reiss
A compelling story of a forgotten swashbuckling hero of mixed race whose bold exploits were captured by his son, Alexander Dumas, in famous 19th century novels.
John Lewis Gaddis
An engaging portrait of a globetrotting diplomat whose complicated life was interwoven with the Cold War and America's emergence as the world's dominant power.
Ron Chernow
A sweeping, authoritative portrait of an iconic leader learning to master his private feelings in order to fulfill his public duties.
2015 Prize Winners
Anthony Doerr
An imaginative and intricate novel inspired by the horrors of World War II and written in short, elegant chapters that explore human nature and the contradictory power of technology.
Julia Wolfe
A powerful oratorio for chorus and sextet evoking Pennsylvania coal-mining life around the turn of the 20th Century.
Stephen Adly Guirgis
A nuanced, beautifully written play about a retired police officer faced with eviction that uses dark comedy to confront questions of life and death.
David I. Kertzer
An engrossing dual biography that uses recently opened Vatican archives to shed light on two men who exercised nearly absolute power over their realms.