Annal:1997 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the year 1997. 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.
A People's Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution
- 1997 LATimes–History winner
- Score: 10.47
It is history on an epic yet human scale. Vast in scope, exhaustive in original research, written with passion, narrative skill, and human sympathy, A People’s Tragedy is a profound account of the Russian Revolution for a new generation.
Many consider the Russian Revolution to be the most significant event of the twentieth century. Distinguished scholar Orlando Figes presents a panorama of Russian society on the eve of that revolution, and then narrates the story of how these social forces were violently erased. Within the broad stokes of war and…
Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1. The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939
- 1997 LATimes–History finalist
- Score: 6.47
A great historian crowns a lifetime of thought and research by answering a question that has haunted us for more than 50 years: How did one of the most industrially and culturally advanced nations in the world embark on and continue along the path leading to one of the most enormous criminal enterprises in history, the extermination of Europe’s Jews?
Giving considerable emphasis to a wealth of new archival findings, Saul Friedlander restores the voices of Jews who, after the 1933 Nazi accession to power, were engulfed in an increasingly horrifying reality. We hear from the persecutors themselves: the leaders of the Nazi party, the members of the Protestant and Catholic hierarchies, the university elites, and the heads of the business community. Most telling of all, perhaps, are the testimonies of ordinary German citizens, who in the main acquiesced to increasing waves of dismissals, segregation, humiliation, impoverishment, expulsion, and violence.
Sun Dancing: Life in a Medieval Irish Monastery and How Celtic Spirituality Influenced the World
- 1997 LATimes–History finalist
- Score: 6.47
Visible on a clear day off the west coast of Ireland, the Skellig Islands, a cluster of cruel rocks, rise spectacularly from the Atlantic Ocean. A sanctuary to birds and seals today, for over six hundred years during the middle ages it was a center for a particularly intense form of monastic life, one that acclaimed writer Geoffrey Moorhouse explores with utmost fascination, scholarship, and imagination in Sun Dancing.
A must read for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of Celtic spirituality, Moorhouse’s lively narrative is a superbly imagined…
Echoes of a Native Land: Two Centuries of a Russian Village
- 1997 LATimes–History finalist
- Score: 6.47
Tracing the lives of his Russian forebears, Serge Schmemann, Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for the New York Times, tells a remarkable story that spans the past two hundred years of Russian history.
First, he draws on a family archive rich in pictorial as well as documentary treasure to bring us into the prerevolutionary life of the village of Sergiyevskoye (now called Koltsovo), where the spacious estate of his mother’s family was the seat of a manor house as vast and imposing as a grand hotel.
In this village, on this estate—ringed…
Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West
- 1997 LATimes–History finalist
- Score: 6.47
The modern struggle against fat cuts deeply and pervasively into American culture. Dieting, weight consciousness, and widespread hostility toward obesity form one of the fundamental themes of modern life.
Fat History explores the meaning of fat in contemporary Western society and illustrates how progressive changes, such as growth in consumer culture, increasing equality for women, and the refocusing of women’s sexual and maternal roles have influenced today’s obsession with fat.
Brought up-to-date with a new preface and filled with narrative…
