NYPL Announces Five Finalists In Its Annual Helen Bernstein Book Award For Excellence In Journalism

Five acclaimed and important titles spanning topics such as religion, the crisis in Burma, pollution and the financial crisis have been named finalists in The New York Public Library’s annual Helen Bernstein Book Award For Excellence in Journalism.

The books were chosen as finalists by a seven-member Library Review Committee, which received 75 nominations from publishers for books published in 2010. Between October and February, the committee read each book nominated, and the finalists are:

• The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line between Christianity and Islam by Eliza Griswold (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
  
• The Watchers; The Rise of America’s Surveillance State by Shane Harris (The Penguin Press)
• Everything is Broken: A Tale of Catastrophe in Burma by Emma Larkin (The Penguin Press)
• All the Devils Are Here: the Hidden History of the Financial Crisis by Bethany McLean & Joe Nocera (Portfolio / Penguin Group - USA)
• The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption and the Control of our Food Supply by Marie-Monique Robin; translated by George Holoch (The New Press)

The journalists represented on the list have been published in respected outlets such as the NY Times, Vanity Fair, Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic and others.

The winner will be announced at a reception and award ceremony on June 7.

Since 1988 the annual award, which includes a $15,000 cash prize, has been given to journalists whose books have brought clarity and public attention to important issues, events, or policies.  Previous winners of the award include Jane Mayer, Charlie Savage, Philip Gourevitch, Lawrence Wright and David Remnick. David Finkel won last year for his book, The Good Soldiers.

For more information, contact NYPL Public Relations Director Angela Montefinise at angela_montefinise@nypl.org.