Press Release
Finalists for 1997 New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award
Announced
New York City, February 6, 1997 The New York Public Library has
announced the five finalists for the 1997 New York Public Library Helen
Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. They are:
David Bornstein, The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank
and the Idea That Is Helping the Poor to Change Their Lives (Simon &
Schuster)
Osha Gray Davidson, The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the
New South (Scribner)
Paul Hendrickson, The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five
Lives of a Lost War (Alfred A. Knopf)
Peter Maass, Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War (Alfred A. Knopf)
David Quammen, The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an
Age of Extinctions (Scribner)
Celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, The New York Public Library
Helen Bernstein Book Award is given annually to an outstanding journalist
whose book has made an impact on public consciousness, events, or policy.
It carries a monetary prize of $15,000, one of the largest literary prizes
awarded in the United States.
An independent selection committee comprised of professional journalists
and publishers and chaired by Henry A. Grunwald, author of One Man's
America: A Journalist's Search for the Heart of His Country (Doubleday),
will choose the winner, who will be announced during a ceremony at The
New York Public Library on April 7. The Award was established in 1987 as
part of a generous gift to the Library, in honor of journalist Helen Bernstein.
About the Finalists
David Bornstein
In The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank and the Idea
That Is Helping the Poor to Change Their Lives (Simon & Schuster),
David Bornstein traces the history of the Grameen, or "Village,"
bank, which provides loans for starting small businesses to landless villagers
in Bangladesh, 94% of whom are women. The book gives a first-hand account
of the importance of this lending institution, one of the leaders in offering
microcredit, a key concept in a new global development effort by the United
States and the United Nations. Mr. Bornstein, who lives in New York, has
written articles for The Atlantic Monthly, New York Newsday,
and the Village Voice. The Price of a Dream is his first
book.
Osha Gray Davidson
Osha Gray Davidson probes one of the most crucial concerns at the heart
of our culture race relations in The Best of Enemies: Race
and Redemption in the New South (Scribner). His book chronicles the
unlikely friendship between an African American Civil Rights activist and
a former Ku Klux Klansman, combining the tangled history of one Southern
city with inspiring personal saga to depict the way in which race and class
intersect. Mr. Davidson is the author of Broken Heartland and Under
Fire and has written extensively for The New Republic. He lives
in Iowa City, Iowa.
Paul Hendrickson
Paul Hendrickson's The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and
Five Lives of a Lost War (Alfred A. Knopf) describes the Vietnam War
through the prism of Robert McNamara's crucial and tangled decision making.
The Living and the Dead follows McNamara from his youth to his tenure
as secretary of defense to the years after his resignation. The author
also presents a vivid portrait of five people who were caught up in the
wake of McNamara's life-and-death decisions. A feature writer for the Washington
Post since 1977, Paul Hendrickson is the author of Seminary: A Search
and Looking for the Light: The Hidden Life and Art of Marion Post Wolcott.
He resides in Takoma Park, Maryland.
Peter Maass
In Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War (Alfred A. Knopf), Peter
Maass provides a powerful account of the war in Bosnia, seen through a
war correspondent's montage of images: a Serb and a Muslim, friends before
the war, exchange gossip only hours before they will try to kill each other;
drivers without headlights gamble their lives in the darkness of no-man's-land
while schoolchildren scamper across Sniper Alley. The author vividly depicts
the minefields of modern war and the thinness of the line between civilization
and chaos. Peter Maass has written for the Washington Post, The
New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He is currently
a staff writer for the Post and lives in Takoma Park, Maryland.
David Quammen
David Quammen, in The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an
Age of Extinctions (Scribner), focuses on the question: Why do island
ecosystems suffer such high rates of extinction? Over the past eight years,
with the aid of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Mr. Quammen has travelled the
globe on a journey of discovery; the result is a work that is a wake-up
call in our age of pandemic extinction. The Song of the Dodo developed
from Mr. Quammen's "Natural Acts" column on Guam's bird extinctions,
written for Outside magazine. His articles have also appeared in
Harper's, Esquire, and Rolling Stone.
Return to Press Releases Page
thoerenz: pro: revised, 3-5-97
