Annal:2005 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the year 2005. 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.
Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves
- 2005 LATimes–History winner
- 2005 NBA–Nonfiction finalist
- Score: 16.55
In 1787, twelve men gathered in a London printing shop to pursue a seemingly impossible goal: ending slavery in the largest empire on earth. Along the way, they would pioneer most of the tools citizen activists still rely on today, from wall posters and mass mailings to boycotts and lapel pins. This talented group combined a hatred of injustice with uncanny skill in promoting their cause. Within five years, more than 300,000 Britons were refusing to eat the chief slave-grown product, sugar; London’s smart set was sporting antislavery badges created by Josiah…
Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941-1945
- 2005 LATimes–History finalist
- Score: 6.55
In the early stages of the Second World War, the vast crescent of British-ruled territories stretching from India to Singapore appeared as a massive Allied asset. It provided scores of soldiers and great quantities of raw materials and helped present a seemingly impregnable global defense against the Axis. Yet, within a few weeks in 1941-42, a Japanese invasion had destroyed all this, sweeping suddenly and decisively through south and southeast Asia to the Indian frontier, and provoking the extraordinary revolutionary struggles which would mark the beginning of…
Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945
- 2006 Pulitzer–Nonfiction finalist
- 2005 LATimes–History finalist
- Score: 12.56
Tony Judt’s Postwar makes one lament the overuse of the word “groundbreaking.” It is an unprecedented accomplishment: the first truly European history of contemporary Europe, from Lisbon to Leningrad, based on research in six languages, covering thirty-four countries across sixty years in a single integrated narrative, using a great deal of material from newly available sources. Tony Judt has drawn on forty years of reading and writing about modern Europe to create a fully rounded, deep account of the continent’s recent past. The book integrates international…
The Third Reich in Power: Volume 2 of The Third Reich Series
- 2005 LATimes–History finalist
- Score: 6.55
The definitive account of Germany’s malign transformation under Hitler’s total rule and the implacable march to war.
By the middle of 1933, the democracy of the Weimar Republic had been transformed into the police state of the Third Reich, mobilized around the cult of the leader, Adolf Hitler. If this could happen in less than a year, what would the future hold? Only the most fervent Nazi party loyalists would have predicted how radical the transformation ahead would be.
In The Third Reich in Power, Richard J. Evans tells the story of Germany’s…
The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln
- 2006 Pulitzer–History finalist
- 2005 LATimes–History finalist
- Score: 12.56
A grand political history in a fresh new style of how the elitist young American republic became a rough-and-tumble democracy.
In this magisterial work, Sean Wilentz traces a historical arc from the earliest days of the republic to the opening shots of the Civil War. One of our finest writers of history, Wilentz brings to life the era after the American Revolution, when the idea of democracy remained contentious, and Jeffersonians and Federalists clashed over the role of ordinary citizens in government of, by, and for the people. The triumph of Andrew Jackson…
