Annal:2006 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the year 2006. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance
- 2006 LATimes–Current Interest winner
- Score: 10.56
Ian Buruma returns to his native land to explore the great dilemma of our time through the story of the brutal murder of controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh at the hands of an Islamic extremist.
It was the emblematic crime of our moment: On a cold November day in Amsterdam, an angry young Muslim man, Mohammed Bouyeri, the son of Moroccan immigrants, shot and killed the celebrated and controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, great-grandnephew of Vincent and iconic European provocateur, for making a movie with the vocally anti-Islam Somali-born Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali that “blasphemed” Islam. After Bouyeri shot van Gogh, he calmly stood over the body and cut his throat with a curved machete, as if performing a ritual sacrifice, which in a very real sense he was.
The murder horrified quiet, complacent, prosperous Holland, a country that prides itself on being a bastion of tolerance, and sent shock waves across Europe and around the world. Shortly thereafter, Ian Buruma returned to his native country to try to make sense of it all and to see what larger meaning…
The Beautiful Fall: Lagerfeld, Saint Laurent, and Glorious Excess in 1970s Paris
- 2006 LATimes–Current Interest finalist
- Score: 6.56
Paris in the '70s was running at full tilt—a new order was coming into view amid hedonism, ambition, and outrageous decadence. This was a fashion revolution, the beginning of fashion as rock-star spectacle, and the world went wild for it. Alicia Drake writes about the dramatic collision and rivalry between two titanic geniuses, Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld, whose clashes sparked that tumultuous decade. Americans came to Paris in droves - from Andy Warhol and Jerry Hall to Bianca Jagger and Jessica Lange—to be part of this irresistible moment. Others came just to catch sight of Karl Lagerfeld strutting around the cafs in his high heels and furs. Drake vividly captures the stunning highs and heartbreaking lows, the glorious achievements and dramas of an era when style reigned in the most glamorous of cities.
The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast
- 2006 LATimes–Current Interest finalist
- Score: 6.56
Bestselling historian Douglas Brinkley, a professor at Tulane University, lived through the destruction of Hurricane Katrina with his fellow New Orleans residents, and now in The Great Deluge he has written one of the first complete accounts of that harrowing week, which sorts out the bewildering events of the storm and its aftermath, telling the stories of unsung heroes and incompetent officials alike. Get a sample of his story—and clarify your own memories—by looking through the detailed timeline he has put together of the preparation, the hurricane, and the response to one of the worst disasters in American history.
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone
- 2006 LATimes–Current Interest finalist
- 2006 NBA–Nonfiction finalist
- Score: 12.56
An unprecedented account of life in Baghdad’s Green Zone, a walled-off enclave of towering plants, posh villas, and sparkling swimming pools that was the headquarters for the American occupation of Iraq.
The Washington Post’s former Baghdad bureau chief Rajiv Chandrasekaran takes us with him into the Zone: into a bubble, cut off from wartime realities, where the task of reconstructing a devastated nation competed with the distractions of a Little America—a half-dozen bars stocked with cold beer, a disco where women showed up in hot pants, a movie theater that screened shoot-’em-up films, an all-you-could-eat buffet piled high with pork, a shopping mall that sold pornographic movies, a parking lot filled with shiny new SUVs, and a snappy dry-cleaning service—much of it run by Halliburton. Most Iraqis were barred from entering the Emerald City for fear they would blow it up.
Drawing on hundreds of interviews and internal documents, Chandrasekaran tells the story of the people and ideas that inhabited the Green Zone during the occupation, from the imperial viceroy L. Paul…
- 2007 Edgar-Fact Crime nominee
- 2006 LATimes–Current Interest finalist
- 2006 NBCC–Autobiography finalist
- Score: 18.57
In the summer of 1977, Terri Jentz and her Yale roommate, Shayna Weiss, make a cross-country bike trip. They pitch a tent in the desert of central Oregon. As they are sleeping, a man in a pickup truck deliberately runs over the tent. He then attacks them with an ax. The horrific crime is reported in newspapers across the country. No one is ever arrested. Both women survive, but Shayna suffers from amnesia, while Terri is left alone with memories of the attack. Their friendship is shattered.
Fifteen years later, Terri returns to the small town where she was nearly murdered, on the first of many visits she will make “to solve the crime that would solve me.” And she makes an extraordinary discovery: the violence of that night is as present for the community as it is for her. Slowly, her extensive interviews with the townspeople yield a terrifying revelation: many say they know who did it, and he is living freely in their midst. Terri then sets out to discover the truth about the crime and its aftermath, and to come to terms with the wounds that broke her life into a before and an…
