#LukasPrizes. Susan Southard, Nikolaus Wachsmann and Steve Luxenberg Named Winners of the 2016 J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project Awards

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1 #LukasPrizes Susan Southard, Nikolaus Wachsmann and Steve Luxenberg Named Winners of the 2016 J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project Awards Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University are pleased to announce the three winners and the three finalists of the 2016 Lukas Prize Project Awards. Susan Southard, an author and theater director, has won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize for her unflinching historical narrative of the bombing of Nagasaki and the aftermath as told through the lives of those who survived it - NAGASAKI: Life After Nuclear War (Viking Penguin). Nikolaus Wachsmann, a professor of modern European history at Birkbeck College, London and an award- winning author, will receive the Mark Lynton History Prize for his definitive history of the German concentration camp system - KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Steve Luxenberg, an associate editor at The Washington Post (on leave) and author, has won the J. Anthony Lukas Work- in- Progress Award for his book about the infamous Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson that gave rise to half a century of racial discrimination - SEPARATE: A Story of Race, Ambition and the Battle That Brought Legal Segregation to America (W.W. Norton). Reporter Dale Russakoff is the finalist for the Lukas Book Prize for THE PRIZE: Who s in Charge of America s Schools? (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), which the judges called a searing portrait of the enormous challenges of saving our schools. Timothy Snyder, a professor of history at Yale University and an award- winning author, is the finalist for the Lynton History Prize for BLACK EARTH: The Holocaust as History and Warning (Tim Duggan Books), which the judges cited for its bold provocative new approach to the Holocaust. Journalist and editor Blaire Briody is the finalist for the Lukas Work- in- Progress Award for her work THE NEW WILD WEST: Black Gold, Fracking, and Life in a North Dakota Boomtown (St. Martin s Press), a first- hand account of the impact of the fracking boom on a small town that the judges called hard hitting and unblinking. The awards will be presented to the winners and finalists at a ceremony on Tuesday, May 10, 2016 at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

distinguished work of the award's namesake, J. Anthony Lukas.

2 The J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize recognizes superb examples of nonfiction writing that exemplify the literary grace, the commitment to serious research, and the social concern that characterized the distinguished work of the award's namesake, J. Anthony Lukas. Books must be on a topic of American political or social concern and must have been published between January 1, 2015, and December 31, The winner receives $10,000. Judges this year: Mark Kurlansky (chair), Charlie Conrad, Jonathan Mahler, Judy Pasternak. Winner: Susan Southard s NAGASAKI: Life After Nuclear War (Viking Penguin) Bio: Susan Southard holds an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles, and was a nonfiction fellow at the Norman Mailer Center in Provincetown, Mass. NAGASAKI was a finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Work- In- Progress Award in Southard lives in Tempe, Ariz., where she is the founder and artistic director of Essential Theatre. Judges Citation: Susan Southard s NAGASAKI: Life After Nuclear War will upset you. With lean and powerful prose she describes the indescribable taking the reader almost minute by minute through the bombing of Nagasaki and then the aftermath. With thorough careful research she exposes a half- century of lies and half- truths about the reasons for the bombing and the results, even denying that radiation poisoning was real. Seventy years later, following the lives of survivors, she reaches the final chapter and at last tells the complete story. Without diatribes or polemics she leaves the reader with a resolve that such a thing must never happen again. Finalist: Dale Russakoff s THE PRIZE: Who s in Charge of America s Schools? (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) Bio: Dale Russakoff spent 28 years as a reporter for The Washington Post, covering politics, education, social policy, and other topics. From 1994 to 2008, she served in the Post s New York Bureau, which included covering the NYC metropolitan area, including Newark, N.J. Russakoff grew up in Birmingham, Ala. THE PRIZE is her first book. She lives in Montclair, N.J. Judges Citation: In THE PRIZE: Who s in Charge of America s Schools? journalist Dale Russakoff powerfully exposes how good intentions go terribly awry after Mark Zuckerberg and his wife pledge $100 million to Newark s distressed public schools. Russakoff s engrossing inside account of the convergence of celebrity politicians, a billionaire philanthropist, and an economically deprived

community and of students and teachers struggling with urban poverty is both a searing portrait of the enormous challenges of saving our schools and a masterly work of investigative reporting.

3 community and of students and teachers struggling with urban poverty is both a searing portrait of the enormous challenges of saving our schools and a masterly work of investigative reporting. The Mark Lynton History Prize is awarded to the book- length work of narrative history, on any subject, that best combines intellectual distinction with felicity of expression. Books must have been published between January 1, 2015, and December 31, The winner receives $10,000. Judges: William Shinker (chair), Lynne Olson, Sylvia Nasar. Winner: Nikolaus Wachsmann s KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Bio: Nikolaus Wachsmann is a professor of modern European history at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of the prize- winning Hitler s Prisons and joint editor of Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany: The New Histories. Judges Citation: A staggering feat of research, synthesis and narrative writing, KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps by Nikolaus Wachsmann is the definitive account of a diabolical institution that evolved and expanded as the Nazis immediate objectives changed. Drawing on archives in virtually every country occupied by the Third Reich as well as Germany itself, Wachsmann challenges the popular image of the concentration camp and the Holocaust as one and the same: In 1933 the KL s purpose was intimidation, not killing, and it was 1943 before the concentration camp became an integral part of the Final Solution. Most of the Jews murdered by the Nazis never became inmates because they were either shot elsewhere or sent straight to gas chambers. The majority of prisoners who perished in a concentration camp from communists, incurables and gays to conquered Poles and Soviet POWs were not Jews. Wachsmann s greatest achievement is to make the inconceivable palpable. Drawing on thousands of Nazi records and first- person accounts, he lets the victims, and sometimes their victimizers, describe in their own words scene after scene of unimaginable suffering. Rarely has anyone combined history from above with history from below to such powerful effect.

Finalist: Timothy Snyder s BLACK EARTH: The Holocaust as History and Warning (Tim Duggan Books) Bio: Timothy Snyder is the Housum Professor of History at Yale University and a member of the Committee

He is the author of Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, which received the literature award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Hannah Arendt Prize, and the Leipzig Book Prize

4 Finalist: Timothy Snyder s BLACK EARTH: The Holocaust as History and Warning (Tim Duggan Books) Bio: Timothy Snyder is the Housum Professor of History at Yale University and a member of the Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He is the author of Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, which received the literature award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Hannah Arendt Prize, and the Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding. Snyder is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement. He is a permanent fellow of the Institute for Human Sciences, serves as the faculty advisor for the Fortunoff Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, and sits on the advisory council of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. He lives in New Haven, Conn. Judges Citation: In this bold, provocative new approach to the Holocaust, Timothy Snyder takes the focus off death camps like Auschwitz to explore the Germans lesser- known, earlier mass murder of millions of Jews in occupied Poland and the Soviet Union. By doing so, Snyder brilliantly illustrates how the Germans wholesale destruction of political, legal, and social institutions in these areas facilitated the killing of virtually their entire Jewish populations. By contrast, in German- occupied countries that retained their statehood, many if not most Jews survived. Snyder s powerful argument that destroying or lessening the role of government institutions opens the door to chaos and violence has profound, unsettling ramifications for our time. The J. Anthony Lukas Work- in- Progress Award is given annually to aid in the completion of a significant work of nonfiction on an American topic of political or social concern. The winner receives $30,000. The committee envisions the award as a way of closing the gap between the time and money an author has and the time and money that finishing a book requires. Judges this year: John Duff, John Ryden, Bill Strachan. Winner: Steve Luxenberg s SEPARATE: A Story of Race, Ambition and the Battle That Brought Legal Segregation to America (W.W. Norton) Bio: Steve Luxenberg is an associate editor at The Washington Post (on leave) and author of the award- winning Annie s Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret. Judges Citation: SEPARATE is the little- known story behind Plessy v. Ferguson, the infamous Supreme Court case that made separate but equal the law of the land and gave judicial cover to a half century of racial discrimination. Generations of scholars have studied the ruling that upheld an 1890 Louisiana law that mandated separate railroad cars for whites and coloreds. Steve Luxenberg's interwoven narrative takes the story in a new direction, providing illuminating answers to fundamental questions: How did it happen? What was it about the time that explains Plessy? What were the players in this

landmark case up to? Why did Homer Plessy, a fair- skinned Creole from New Orleans enter a whites- only railroad car so he could be arrested as planned?

5 landmark case up to? Why did Homer Plessy, a fair- skinned Creole from New Orleans enter a whites- only railroad car so he could be arrested as planned? How could a Court with seven Northern justices come to such an unjust decision? How could separate ever be thought equal? Luxenberg finds answers by looking long and hard at the lives and beliefs of those who were swept up in this landmark case, beginning with the three main characters: Justice Henry Billings, who wrote the majority opinion; Justice John Marshall Harlan, one of two Southerners on the Court, who wrote the lone dissent; and white civil rights advocate Albion Tourgée, who designed the legal strategy for Plessy. Their story and the parts played by a large supporting cast are the heart of Separate, this rich, complex, and all too human story, replete with ironies and unintended consequences. This is big history, deeply researched, and well told. Finalist: Blaire Briody s THE NEW WILD WEST: Black Gold, Fracking and Life in a North Dakota Boomtown (St. Martin s Press) Bio: Blaire Briody is an award- winning journalist and editor- at- large for The Fiscal Times. She has written for The New York Times, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Fast Company, and Glamour, among others. She s currently working on a nonfiction book about the oil boom in North Dakota, and received the Richard J. Margolis Award in She graduated from the University of California, Davis with a degree in international relations. Judges Citation: Blaire Briody s first- hand account of the impact of the fracking boom on a small Midwestern town is good old- fashioned journalism at its best, hard- hitting and unblinking. Embedded in oil country for months at a time, she reports on the transformation of the town, its Native American neighbors, and the landscape on the farmers who watched fields they d worked for generations plowed up, on the thousands of workers, mostly men, holed up in dismal camps. She documents the lawlessness, the prostitution and the violence toward women that followed in their wake. It s a 21 st century reenactment of a story that was all- too familiar to 19 th century America. And Briody is doing the nation a service by telling it like it is. She needs to finish the job. About the Prizes: Established in 1998, the Lukas Prize Project honors the best in American nonfiction writing. Co- administered by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, and sponsored by the family of the late Mark Lynton, a historian and senior executive at the firm Hunter Douglas in the Netherlands, the Lukas Prize Project presents three awards annually.

About Columbia Journalism School The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism trains journalists in a program that stresses academic rigor, ethics, inquiry and professional practice.

6 About Columbia Journalism School The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism trains journalists in a program that stresses academic rigor, ethics, inquiry and professional practice. Founded with a gift from Joseph Pulitzer, the School opened its doors in 1912 and offers master of science, master of arts, and doctor of philosophy degrees. About the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard educates leaders in journalism and elevates the standards of the profession through special programs that convene scholars and experts in all fields. More than 1,500 journalists from 93 countries have been awarded Nieman Fellowships since The foundation s other initiatives include Nieman Reports, a quarterly print and online magazine that covers thought leadership in journalism; Nieman Journalism Lab, a website that reports on the future of news, innovation and best practices in the digital media age; and Nieman Storyboard, a website that showcases exceptional narrative journalism and explores the future of nonfiction storytelling. For more information, please contact: Beth Parker Beth Parker PR beth@bethparkerpr.com Caroline L. Martinet, Program Manager, Professional Prizes Columbia Journalism School cm3443@columbia.edu Follow #LukasPrizes Follow Columbia Journalism Follow the Nieman ###

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