Los Angeles Times 2001 Book Prize Finalists Announced

The 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalists were announced on Friday, March 2. Established in 1980, the Times’s annual Book Prize rewards excellence in English-language writing in nine different categories, ranging from biography to fiction to history to poetry. And, notably, several Book Sense 76 picks are among in the list of 45 finalists (including three of the five titles in the first fiction category).

Eight panels of three judges nominated the five Book Prize finalists in each category (a panel of three judges per category, with the fiction panel handling both the Fiction and the First Fiction categories). To be nominated, each book must have been published between January 1 and December 13, 2001. Among this year’s judges were Eric Lax for Biography and Judith Freeman for Fiction.

The nine winners, who each win a citation and $1,000, will be named during the Book Prize ceremony, held on April 27, at UCLA’s Royce Hall, during the seventh annual, two-day Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Additionally, the winner of the Robert Kirsch Award, recognizing the body of work by a writer living in and/or writing on the American West, will be announced at the ceremony.

The Times Festival of Books will be held Saturday, April 27, from 10:00 – 6:00 p.m., and Sunday, April 28, from 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. on the UCLA campus. A number of well-known authors will be participating in the festival, including Mark Bowden (author of Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War) and Annie Proulx (author of The Shipping News). (For more information, and a listing of previous Book Prize winners, go to Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.)

The full listing of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalists is:

• Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser (Nan A. Talese Books)
  
• Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand (Random House); March/April 2001 Book Sense 76
  
• John Adams by David McCullough (Simon & Schuster)
  
• Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris (Random House)
  
• Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson by Adam Sisman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).
  

• States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering by Stanley Cohen (Polity)
  
• The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued by Ann Crittenden (Metropolitan Books)
  
• The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment That Redefined the Supreme Court by John W. Dean (The Free Press)
  
• Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich (Metropolitan Books); July/August 2001 Book Sense 76
  
• Tom and Huck Don't Live Here Anymore: Childhood and Murder in the Heart of America by Ron Powers (St. Martin's Press).
  

• The Corrections: A Novel by Jonathan Franzen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux); September/October 2001 Book Sense 76
  
• By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah (The New Press)
  
• Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories by Alice Munro (Alfred A. Knopf)
  
• Why Did I Ever: A Novel by Mary Robison (Counterpoint Press); November/December Book Sense 76
  
• John Henry Days: A Novel by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday Books); July/August 2001 Book Sense 76
  

• My Dream of You by Nuala O'Faolain (Riverhead Books); March/April 2001 Book Sense 76
  
• Crawling at Night: A Novel by Nani Power (Atlantic Monthly Press)
  
• The Dark Room (a novel) by Rachel Seiffert (Pantheon Books); May/June 2001 Book Sense 76
  
• The Death of Vishnu: A Novel by Manil Suri (W.W. Norton); January/February 2002 Book Sense 76
  
• The Right Hand of Sleep: A Novel by John Wray (Alfred A. Knopf)

• The Stranger From Paradise: A Biography of William Blake by G.E. Bentley Jr. (Yale University Press)
  
• France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944 by Julian Jackson (Oxford University Press)
  
• The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
  
• Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus by Rick Perlstein (Hill & Wang)
  
• Venice, Lion City: The Religion of Empire by Garry Wills (Simon & Schuster).
  

• Open Season: A Joe Pickett Novel by C.J. Box (G.P. Putnam's Sons); September/October 2001 Book Sense 76
  
• Little America: A Novel by Henry Bromell (Alfred A. Knopf); July/August 2001 Book Sense 76
  
• The Wooden Leg of Inspector Anders by Marshall Browne (Thomas Dunne Books)
  
• Chasing the Devil's Tail: A Storyville Mystery by David Fulmer (Poisoned Pen Press)
  
• Silent Joe: A Novel by T. Jefferson Parker (Hyperion).
  

• The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos by Anne Carson (Alfred A. Knopf)
  
• Felt: Poems by Alice Fulton (W.W. Norton)
  
• The Seven Ages by Louise Glück (Ecco)
  
• Landscape With Chainsaw: Poems by James Lasdun (W.W. Norton)
  
• Song of the World Becoming: New and Collected Poems, 1981-2001 by Pattiann Rogers (Milkweed Editions)
  

• In Code: A Mathematical Journey by Sarah Flannery with David Flannery (Workman Publishing Company)
  
• The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies by Richard Hamblyn (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
  
• A Different Nature: The Paradoxical World of Zoos and Their Uncertain Future by David Hancocks (University of California Press)
  
• Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood by Oliver Sacks (Alfred A. Knopf)
  
• The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry by Bryan Sykes (W.W. Norton)
  

• The Seeing Stone by Kevin Crossley-Holland (Arthur A. Levine Books); Children’s Book Sense 76, Fall 2001
  
• Damage by A.M. Jenkins (HarperCollins Children's Books)
  
• Girlhearts by Norma Fox Mazer (HarperCollins Children's Books)
  
• The Other Side of Truth by Beverley Naidoo, (HarperCollins Children's Books)
  
• The Land by Mildred D. Taylor (Phyllis Fogelman Books); Teen Book Sense 76, Volume 1 2002

Three of the five finalists for The Los Angeles Times Book Prize award for First Fiction were previous Book Sense 76 picks: My Dream of You by Nuala O’Faolain (Riverhead Books); The Dark Room (a novel) by Rachel Seiffert (Pantheon Books); and The Death of Vishnu: A Novel, by Manil Suri (W.W. Norton). Moreover, 12 of the 45 Book Prize finalists were prior Book Sense 76 picks, including three of the five Fiction finalists.