Annal:2003 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography
From AwardAnnals
Results of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in the year 2003. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography
- Nonfiction books
- Nonfiction authors
- Biography books
- Biography authors.
Charles Darwin: The Power of Place
- 2003 JT Black-Biography winner
- 2002 NBCC–Biography winner
- Score: 20.53
In 1858 Charles Darwin was forty-nine years old, a gentleman scientist living quietly at Down House in the Kent countryside, respected by fellow biologists and well liked among his wide and distinguished circle of acquaintances. He was not yet a focus of debate; his “big book on species” still lay on his study desk in the form of a huge pile of manuscript. For more than twenty years he had been accumulating material for it, puzzling over questions it raised, trying—it seemed endlessly—to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion. Publication appeared to be as far…
White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India
- 2004 Kiriyama-Nonfiction finalist
- 2003 JT Black-Biography shortlist
- Score: 12.54
From the early sixteenth century, it was common for British colonizers in India to embarrass the Crown by “turning Turk” or “going native.” Few caused greater scandal than James Kirkpatrick, a British resident in the Court of Hyderabad, who converted to Islam and spied on the East India Company in the midst of an affair with Khair un-Nissa, the great-niece of the region’s prime minister.
White Moguls is rich with many eccentric characters, from “Hindoo Stuart,” who traveled with his own team of Brahmins, to Alexander Gardner, an American whose…
Gellhorn: A Twentieth Century Life
- 2003 JT Black-Biography shortlist
- 2003 Whitbread-Biography shortlist
- Score: 12.53
The first major biography of legendary war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, whose life provides a unique and thrilling perspective on world history in an extraordinary time
Martha Gellhorn’s heroic career as a reporter brought her to the front lines of virtually every significant international conflict between the Spanish Civil War and the end of the Cold War. The preeminent-and often the only-female correspondent on the scene, she broke new ground for women in the male preserve of journalism. Her wartime dispatches, marked by a passionate desire to expose…
