Annal:2006 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the year 2006. 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.
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
- 2007 Pulitzer–Nonfiction winner
- 2006 LATimes–History winner
- 2006 NBA–Nonfiction finalist
- Score: 26.57
A sweeping narrative history of the events leading to 9/11, a groundbreaking look at the people and ideas, the terrorist plans and the Western intelligence failures that culminated in the assault on America. Lawrence Wright’s remarkable book is based on five years of research and hundreds of interviews that he conducted in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, England, France, Germany, Spain, and the United States.
The Looming Tower achieves an unprecedented level of intimacy and insight by telling the story through the interweaving lives…
At Canaan's Edge: Volume 3 of America in the King Years, 1965-68
- 2006 LATimes–History finalist
- 2006 NBA–Nonfiction finalist
- 2006 NBCC–Biography finalist
- Score: 18.56
At Canaan’s Edge concludes America in the King Years, a three-volume history that will endure as a masterpiece of storytelling on American race, violence, and democracy. Pulitzer Prize-winner and bestselling author Taylor Branch makes clear in this magisterial account of the civil rights movement that Martin Luther King, Jr., earned a place next to James Madison and Abraham Lincoln in the pantheon of American history.
In At Canaan’s Edge, King and his movement stand at the zenith of America’s defining story, one decade into an epic…
The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai
- 2006 LATimes–History finalist
- Score: 6.56
The Colony reveals the untold history of the infamous American leprosy colony on Molokai and of the extraordinary people who struggled to survive under the most horrific circumstances. John Tayman tells the fantastic saga of this horrible and hopeful place—at one time the most famous community in the world—and of the individuals involved. The result is a searing tale of survival and bravery, and a testament to the power of faith, compassion, and heroism.
Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War
- 2007 Pulitzer–History finalist
- 2006 LATimes–History finalist
- Score: 12.57
From the perilous ocean crossing to the shared bounty of the first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrim settlement of New England has become enshrined as our most sacred national myth. Yet, as bestselling author Nathaniel Philbrick reveals in his spellbinding new book, the true story of the Pilgrims is much more than the well-known tale of piety and sacrifice; it is a fifty-five-year epic that is at once tragic, heroic, exhilarating, and profound.
With towering figures like William Bradford and the distinctly American hero Benjamin Church at the center of his narrative, Philbrick has fashioned a fresh and compelling portrait of the dawn of American history-a history dominated right from the start by issues of race, violence, and religion.
The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West
- 2006 LATimes–History finalist
- Score: 6.56
A revolutionary reinterpretation of the modern era that resolves its central paradox: why unprecedented progress coincided with unprecedented violence and why the seeming triumph of the West bore the seeds of its undoing.
From the conflicts that presaged the First World War to the aftershocks of the cold war, the twentieth century was by far the bloodiest in all of human history. How can we explain the astonishing scale and intensity of its violence when, thanks to the advances of science and economics, most people were better off than ever before-eating better, growing taller, and living longer? Niall Ferguson-one of Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People”-masterfully examines what he calls the age of hatred and sets out to explain what went wrong with modernity.
