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For a distinguished book of non-fiction by an American author that is not eligible for consideration in any other category, Seven thousand five hundred dollars ($7,500).

"A Problem From Hell:" America and the Age of Genocide, by Samantha Power (Basic Books)

Lee Bollinger and Samantha Power

Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger presents Samantha Power with the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction.

Winning Work

"A Problem From Hell": America and the Age of Genocide

"A Problem from Hell" is a path-breaking interrogation of the last century of American history. Samantha Power poses a question that haunts our nation's past: Why do American leaders who vow "never again" repeatedly fail to marshal the will and the might to stop genocide? She provides the answer in the form of the suspenseful story of courageous individuals who risked their careers and lives in an effort to get the United States to act. Drawing upon exclusive interviews with Washington's top policy makers, access to thousands of pages of newly declassified documents, and her own reporting from the modern killing fields, Power shows how those who urged U.S. action were thwarted again and again by ignorance, indifference, and, above all, a failure of imagination.

(From the book jacket)

Biography

Samantha Power is the executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

A former Balkan war correspondent and a graduate of Harvard Law School, she lives in Winthrop, Massachusetts.

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in General Nonfiction in 2003:

The Jury

Richard Bernstein(chair )

book critic

Diane Ackerman

author and visiting scholar

Patricia Limerick

professor of history and environmental studies, chair of the board and faculty director Center for the American West

Winners in General Nonfiction

2003 Prize Winners

Diana K. Sugg

For her absorbing, often poignant stories that illuminated complex medical issues through the lives of people.