Annal:1990 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography

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Results of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the year 1990. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:

A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt

Geoffrey C. Ward

Means of Ascent: Volume 2 of The Years of Lyndon Johnson

Robert A. Caro

1990 NBCC–Biography winner
1990 LATimes–Biography finalist
Score: 16.4

MEANS OF ASCENT is the second book in the LBJ trilogy. It carries Johnson from his 1941 Senate defeat through WW II and on to the securing of his fortunes, both economic and political.

Caro tells this story with an eye for detail. He focuses not only on Johnson, but on Johnson’s “unbeatable” opponent, former Texas Governor Coke Stevenson. As the political duel between the two men quickens, it moves with all the drama of the perfect Western. Caro has us witness a momentous turning point in American politics: the tragic last stand of politics of issue versus politics of image.

The Iron Lady: A Biography of Margaret Thatcher

Hugo Young

1990 LATimes–Biography finalist
Score: 6.4

A biography of Margaret Thatcher that follows Mrs. Thatcher’s political formation form her beginnings as a small-town alderman’s daughter to her emergence as the senior statesman of the Western World.

Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography

Deirdre Bair

1990 LATimes–Biography finalist
Score: 6.4

This definitive biography is based on five years of interviews with de Beauvoir, and is written with her full cooperation. Bair penetrates the mystique of this brilliant and often paradoxical woman, who has been called one of the great minds of the 20th century, and surely, one of the most famously unconventional figures of her generation.

“As a reference work…Simone de Beauvoir can be considered definitive”. —The Atlantic.