Annal:2004 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the year 2004. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War
- 2004 LATimes–Current Interest winner
- Score: 10.54
In the tradition of Black Hawk Down and Jarhead comes a searing portrait of young men fighting a modern-day war.
A powerhouse work of nonfiction, Generation Kill expands on Evan Wright’s acclaimed three-part series that appeared in Rolling Stone during the summer of 2003. His narrative follows the twenty-three marines of First Recon who spearheaded the blitzkrieg on Iraq. This elite unit, nicknamed “First Suicide Battalion,” searched out enemy fighters by racing ahead of American battle forces and literally driving into suspected…
The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness
- 2004 LATimes–Current Interest finalist
- Score: 6.54
Karen Armstrong begins this spellbinding story of her spiritual journey with her departure in 1969 from the Roman Catholic convent she had entered seven years before—hoping, but ultimately failing, to find God. She knew almost nothing of the changed world to which she was returning, and she was tormented by panic attacks and inexplicable seizures.
Armstrong’s struggle against despair was further fueled by a string of discouragements—failed spirituality, doctorate, and jobs; fruitless dealings with psychiatrists. Finally, in 1976, she was diagnosed with…
- 2005 Anthony-Critical nominee
- 2004 LATimes–Current Interest finalist
- 2004 NBCC–Nonfiction finalist
- Score: 18.55
The life of a New York City police officer, with the NYPD running through his veins: a highly anticipated nonfiction epic—destined to be a classic.
Blue Blood is an important book about what it means to protect, to serve, and to defend among the ranks of New York’s finest. Conlon’s canvas is great and complicated—he is fourth generation NYPD—and the story he tells is impossibly rich: it presents an anecdotal history of New York through its police force, and depicts a vivid portrait of the teeming street life of the city in all its horror and splendor.…
- 2004 LATimes–Current Interest finalist
- Score: 6.54
Among the most enjoyable of literary critics, Michael Dirda combines erudition with enthusiasm, a taste for the outré and the forgotten, and a playful, understated wit. Like George Orwell or Gore Vidal, Dirda delights in popular genres, such as the detective novel and the ghost story, without neglecting the deeper satisfactions of sometimes-overlooked classics. This new work features scores of Dirda’s most engaging essays, never previously collected in book form, all intended to introduce readers to wonderful writers, from the anecdotal Herodotus and James…
Truth & Beauty: A Friendship
- 2004 LATimes–Current Interest finalist
- Score: 6.54
What happens when the person who is your family is someone you aren’t bound to by blood? What happens when the person you promise to love and to honor for the rest of your life is not your lover, but your best friend? In Truth & Beauty, her frank and startlingly intimate first work of nonfiction, Ann Patchett shines a fresh, revealing light on the world of women’s friendships and shows us what it means to stand together.
Ann Patchett and Lucy Grealy met in college in 1981, and, after enrolling in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, began a friendship that would…
