Annal:1996 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the year 1996. 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.
- 1996 LATimes–History winner
- Score: 10.46
In this study of the fateful encounters between Europe and Asia on the shores of a legendary sea, Neal Ascherson explores the disputed meaning of community, nationhood, history, and culture in a region famous for its dramatic conflicts. What makes the Back Sea cultures distinctive, Ascherson agrues, is the way their comonent parts came together over the millennia to shape unique communities, languages, religions, and trade. As he shows with skill and persuasiveness, Black Sea patterns in the Caucasus, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Turkey, and Greece have linked the…
Europe: A History
- 1996 LATimes–History finalist
- Score: 6.46
Here is a masterpiece of historical narrative that stretches from the Ice Age to the Atomic Age, as it tells the story of Europe, East and West. Norman Davies captures it all-the rise and fall of Rome, the sweeping invasions of Alaric and Atilla, the Norman Conquests, the Papal struggles for power, the Renaissance and the Reformation, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, Europe’s rise to become the powerhouse of the world, and its eclipse in our own century, following two devastating World Wars.
This is the first major history of Europe to give…
William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic
- 1996 Pulitzer–History winner
- 1996 LATimes–History finalist
- Score: 16.46
In this story of a frontier village in the early American Republic, Alan Taylor explores the lives of Judge William Cooper and the novelist James Fenimore Cooper—father and son. As frontier speculator, landlord, and politician, the father played a leading role in the conquest, resettlement, and environmental transformation of the early nation. Drawing upon his childhood memories of the New York frontier, the son created the historical fictions that made him the most popular, influential, and controversial American novelist of the early nineteenth…
Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California
- 1996 LATimes–History finalist
- Score: 6.46
In Endangered Dreams, Starr begins with the rise of radicalism on the Pacific Coast, which erupted when the Great Depression swept over California in the 1930s. Starr captures the triumphs and tumult of the great agricultural strikes in the Imperial Valley, the San Joaquin Valley, Stockton, and Salinas, identifying the crucial role played by Communist organizers; he also shows how, after some successes, the Communists disbanded their unions on direct orders of the Comintern in 1935. T
he highpoint of social conflict, however, was 1934, the year of the…
War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage
- 1996 LATimes–History finalist
- Score: 6.46
For the last fifty years, most popular and scholarly works have agreed that prehistoric warfare was rare, harmless, and unimportant. According to this view, it was little more than a ritualized game, where casualties were limited and the effects of aggression relatively mild. Lawrence Keeley’s groundbreaking War Before Civilization offers a devastating rebuttal to such comfortable myths and debunks the notion that warfare was introduced to primitive societies through contact with civilization.
Building on much fascinating archeological and historical…
Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris
- 1997 Pulitzer–Nonfiction winner
- 1996 LATimes–History finalist
- 1996 NBCC–Nonfiction finalist
- 1996 LATimes–Current Interest finalist*
- Score: 22.47
No book before this one has rendered the story of cigarettes—mankind’s most common self-destructive instrument and its most profitable consumer product—with such sweep and enlivening detail. Here for the first time, in a story full of the complexities and contradictions of human nature, all the strands of the historical process—financial, social, psychological, medical, political, and legal—are woven together in a riveting narrative. The key characters are the top corporate executives, public health investigators, and antismoking activists who have clashed ever…
