Annal:2000 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the year 2000. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War
- 2000 LATimes–Current Interest winner
- 2001 Pulitzer–History finalist
- 2000 NBCC–Nonfiction finalist
- Score: 22.5
Way Out There in the Blue is a major work of history by the Pulitzer Prizewinning author of Fire in the Lake. Using the Star Wars missile defense program as a magnifying glass on his presidency, Frances FitzGerald gives us a wholly original portrait of Ronald Reagan, the most puzzling president of the last half of the twentieth century.
Reagan’s presidency and the man himself have always been difficult to fathom. His influence was enormous, and the few powerful ideas he espoused remain with us still—yet he seemed nothing more than a charming,…
The Missionary and the Libertine: Love and War in East and West
- 2000 LATimes–Current Interest finalist
- Score: 6.5
For centuries Westerners have projected fan-tasies of a decadent, voluptuous East in contrast to the puritanism of their own cultures. A Japanese theatrical troupe performing in his native Holland in 1971 exposed the young Ian Buruma to these temptations, and soon he was off to Tokyo, a would-be libertine. The essays collected in The Missionary and the Libertine chronicle Buruma’s sobering discovery that Asians often have equally distorted visions of the West.
In these humorous and enlightening essays, Buruma describes the last days of Hong Kong, the…
Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon
- 2000 LATimes–Current Interest finalist
- 2000 NBA–Nonfiction finalist
- Score: 12.5
The explosive and highly controversial National Book Award finalist that has forever changed the discipline of anthropology. Thought to be the last “virgin” people, the Yanomami were considered the most savage and warlike tribe on earth, as well as one of the most remote, secreted in the jungles and highlands of the Venezuelan and Brazilian rainforest. Preeminent anthropologists like Napoleon Chagnon and Jacques Lizot founded their careers in the 1960s by “discovering” the Yanomami’s ferocious warfare and sexual competition. Their research is now examined in…
The Mysteries Within: A Surgeon Explores Myth, Medicine, and the Human Body
- 2000 LATimes–Current Interest finalist
- Score: 6.5
As a veteran surgeon, Sherwin Nuland is familiar with such organs as the heart, stomach, liver, spleen, and uterus. In folklore and legend, these organs have been given “personalities” or behaviors that often reflected prevailing philosophies of the time. Although we think of ourselves as living in a scientific age, we have inherited many of these folktales and illusions, and we are often comforted by what they tell us about ourselves, even when the legends are inaccurate.
In tracing these legends from primitive times to the present day, Dr. Nuland shows how…
Pitching Around Fidel: A Journey into the Heart of Cuban Sports
- 2000 LATimes–Current Interest finalist
- Score: 6.5
In an artful pastiche of observation, personal narrative, interviews, and investigative reporting, S.L. Price, a Senior Writer for Sports Illustrated, describes sports and athletes in today’s Cuba. On his many journeys to the island, Price finds a country that celebrates sports like no other and a leader who uses athletics as both symbol and weapon in his country’s dying revolution.
With Castro’s regime staggering beneath the weight of a great depression and international sanctions, Cuba’s famed sports machine is imploding. Athletes are defecting by…
