Annal:1985 National Book Award for Nonfiction
From AwardAnnals
Results of the National Book Award in the year 1985. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families
- 1986 Pulitzer–Nonfiction winner
- 1985 NBA–Nonfiction winner
- 1985 NBCC–Nonfiction winner
- Score: 30.36
The climax of this humane account of 10 years in Boston that began with news of Martin Luther King’s assassination, is a watershed moment in the city’s modern history—the 1974 racist riots that followed the court-ordered busing of kids to integrate the schools. To bring understanding to that moment, Lukas, a former New York Times journalist, focuses on two working-class families, headed by an Irish-American widow and an African-American mother, and on the middle-class family of a white liberal couple. Lukas goes beyond stereotypes, carefully grounding each…
