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Board lander photo
Board lander photo caption

front row left to right: E. Alexander, T. Shelby, J. Dehli, K. Willey, R. Beck, E. Ramshaw, M. Pride, G. Collins; back row left to right: J. Diaz, N. Brown, A. Marqués, J. Daniszewski, K. Boo, E. Robinson, S. Engelberg, S. Hahn, R. Blau (absent: L. Bollinger, S. Coll)

Board Lander Sub Title
Randell Beck, Joyce Dehli and Keven Ann Willey, chairs; Mike Pride, administrator

John Donvan and Caren Zucker

Publication
In a Different Key: The Story of Autism
Citation
For a passionate work of advocacy that traces public perceptions about autism from chillingly cruel beginnings to a kinder but still troubling present.
Publisher
Crown
Tags: 2017
Categories: General Nonfiction

Matthew Desmond

Citation
For a deeply researched exposé that showed how mass evictions after the 2008 economic crash were less a consequence than a cause of poverty.
Tags: 2017
Categories: General Nonfiction
Publisher
Crown
Publication
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Hisham Matar

Citation
For a first-person elegy for home and father that examines with controlled emotion the past and present of an embattled region.
Tags: 2017
Categories: Biography
Publisher
Random House
Publication
The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between

the late Paul Kalanithi

Publication
When Breath Becomes Air
Citation
For an elegant memoir of the author’s turn from gifted physician to terminal patient, told without a hint of bravado or self-pity.
Publisher
Random House
Tags: 2017
Categories: Biography

Susan Faludi

Publication
In the Darkroom
Citation
For an extraordinary familial study of history, religion and gender that becomes, in the end, a parable of understanding and forgiveness.
Publisher
Metropolitan Books
Tags: 2017
Categories: Biography

Wendy Warren

Publication
New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America
Citation
For a groundbreaking study that alters our view of history by showing how deeply embedded slavery became in 17th-century northern colonies.
Publisher
Liveright/W.W. Norton
Tags: 2017
Categories: History

Heather Ann Thompson

Citation
For a narrative history that sets high standards for scholarly judgment and tenacity of inquiry in seeking the truth about the 1971 Attica prison riots.
Tags: 2017
Categories: History
Publisher
Pantheon
Publication
Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy

Larrie D. Ferreiro

Publication
Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It
Citation
For a book that, with flair and insight, casts the American Revolution in the fresh light of its proper context in international history.
Publisher
Alfred A. Knopf
Tags: 2017
Categories: History

Colson Whitehead

Citation
For a smart melding of realism and allegory that combines the violence of slavery and the drama of escape in a myth that speaks to contemporary America.
Tags: 2017
Categories: Fiction
Publisher
Doubleday
Publication
The Underground Railroad

C. E. Morgan

Publication
The Sport of Kings
Citation
For a daring novel that explores race, the burden of history and other themes of American life on a vast and imaginative canvas.
Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Tags: 2017
Categories: Fiction