The 2019 J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project Awards were presented at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard on May 7, 2019. The awards honor the best in American nonfiction writing and are co-administered by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation. The project is sponsored by the family of the late Mark Lynton, a historian and senior executive at the firm Hunter Douglas in the Netherlands.
The 2019 honorees are Shane Bauer for “American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment” (the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize); Andrew Delbanco for “The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War” and Jeffrey C. Stewart for “The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke” (the Mark Lynton History Prize); and Maurice Chammah for “Let the Lord Sort Them: Texas and the Death Penalty’s Rise and Fall in America” and Steven Dudley for “Mara: The Making of the MS13” (the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award).
Lauren Hilgers was the finalist for the Lukas Book Prize for “Patriot Number One: American Dreams in Chinatown.” David W. Blight was selected as the Lynton History Prize finalist for “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.”
