Annal:1993 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the year 1993. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History
- History books
- History authors
- Nonfiction books
- Nonfiction authors.
New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery
Anthony Grafton, April Shelford, Nancy Siraisi
- 1993 LATimes–History winner
- Score: 10.43
On encountering what he called “the Indies,” the Jesuit Jose de Acosta wrote, “Having read what poets and philosophers write of the Torrid Zone, I persuaded myself that when I came to the Equator, I would not be able to endure the violent heat, but it turned out otherwise… What could I do then but laugh at Aristotle’s Meteorology and his philosophy?” Acosta’s experience echoes that of his fellow travelers to the New World, and it is this experience, with its profound effect on Western culture, that Anthony Grafton charts.
Describing an era of exploration that…
Rising in the West: The True Story of an "Okie" family in Search of the American Dream
- 1993 LATimes–History finalist
- Score: 6.43
Alain Peyrefitte, Jon Rothschild
- 1993 LATimes–History finalist
- Score: 6.43
From Alain Peyrefitte, a historical tour de force: The Immobile Empire recaptures the extraordinary experience of two worlds in collision. Peyrefitte describes in fascinating detail the story of the failed attempt by the British during the 1790s to open the Chinese Empire to Western trade.
Led by Lord George Macartney, whose previous diplomatic career had involved successful stints in India and the Caribbean, the enormous British expedition of nearly seven hundred men included diplomats, doctors, scholars, painters, musicians, soldiers, and young…
Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992
- 1993 LATimes–History finalist
- Score: 6.43
Jane Hamilton-Merritt, Nobel-nominated scholar and photojournalist, has followed the plight of the Hmong and the war in Indochina since the 1960s. The staunchest of allies, the Hmong sided with the Americans against the North Vietnamese and were foot soldiers in the brutal secret war for Laos. Since the war, abandoned by their American allies, the Hmong have been subjected to a campaign of genocide by the North Vietnamese, including the use of chemical weapons. Tragic Mountains moves from the big picture of international diplomacy and power politics to the…
The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity
- 1993 LATimes–History finalist
- Score: 6.43
“Cotton obsessed, Negro obsessed,” Rupert Vance called it in 1935. “Nowhere but in the Mississippi Delta,” he said, “are antebellum conditions so nearly preserved.” This crescent of bottomlands between Memphis and Vicksburg, lined by the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers, remains in some ways what it was in 1860: a land of rich soil, wealthy planters, and desperate poverty—the blackest and poorest counties in all the South. And yet it is a cultural treasure house as well—the home of Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Charley Pride, Walker Percy, Elizabeth Spencer, and Shelby…
