Annal:2004 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the year 2004. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography
- Nonfiction books
- Nonfiction authors
- Biography books
- Biography authors.
De Kooning: An American Master
- 2005 Pulitzer–Biography winner
- 2004 LATimes–Biography winner
- 2004 NBCC–Biography winner
- Score: 30.55
Willem de Kooning is one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, a true “painter’s painter” whose protean work continues to inspire many artists. In the thirties and forties, along with Arshile Gorky and Jackson Pollock, he became a key figure in the revolutionary American movement of abstract expressionism. Of all the painters in that group, he worked the longest and was the most prolific, creating powerful, startling images well into the 1980s.
The first major biography of de Kooning captures both the life and work of this complex, romantic…
- 2004 LATimes–Biography finalist
- 2004 NBCC–Biography finalist
- Score: 12.54
Ron Chernow, whom the New York Times called “as elegant an architect of monumental histories as we’ve seen in decades,” now brings to startling life the man who was arguably the most important figure in American history, who never attained the presidency, but who had a far more lasting impact than many who did.
An illegitimate, largely self-taught orphan from the Caribbean, Hamilton rose with stunning speed to become George Washington’s aide-de-camp, a member of the Constitutional Convention, coauthor of The Federalist Papers, leader of the…
Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
- 2005 Pulitzer–Biography finalist
- 2004 LATimes–Biography finalist
- 2004 NBA–Nonfiction finalist
- 2004 NBCC–Biography finalist
- Score: 24.55
A young man from the provinces—a man without wealth, connections, or university education—moves to London. In a remarkably short time he becomes the greatest playwright not just of his age but of all time. His works appeal to urban sophisticates and first-time theatergoers; he turns politics into poetry; he recklessly mingles vulgar clowning and philosophical subtlety. How is such an achievement to be explained?
Will in the World interweaves a searching account of Elizabethan England with a vivid narrative of the playwright’s life. We see Shakespeare…
John James Audubon: The Making of an American
- 2004 LATimes–Biography finalist
- Score: 6.54
The first major biography of John James Audubon in 40 years, and the first to illuminate fully the private and family life of the master illustrator of the natural world.
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Richard Rhodes shows us young Audubon arriving in New York from France in 1803, falling in love, marrying, and crossing the Appalachians to start a new life in frontier Kentucky. We see him exploring the wilderness of birds—pelicans wading the shallows of interior rivers, songbirds flocking, passenger pigeons darkening the skies—and teaching himself to…
Washington Gone Crazy: Senator Pat McCarran and the Great American Communist Hunt
- 2004 LATimes–Biography finalist
- Score: 6.54
In this sweeping, monumental work of American history, journalist Michael J. Ybarra tells the story of Senator Pat McCarran’s extraordinary career for the first time, and he vividly re-creates a passionate era of politics that reshaped America and echoes to this day. Brilliantly researched and energetically written, Washington Gone Crazy makes a significant new contribution to our understanding of the United States in the twentieth century.
McCarran was one of the most shrewd and powerful—and vindictive—lawmakers ever to sit in Congress. Joe McCarthy…
