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Bookshare Has 2017 Pulitzer Prize Winners for Stimulating Spring Reading

By guest author Guillian Hetzler, Bookshare Digital Content Manager

Spring is here and with it the annual announcement of the Pulitzer Prize winners and finalists. Established by newspaper publishing magnate Joseph Pulitzer, the prizes have honored excellence in journalism and the arts since 1917.  The Bookshare team is very pleased to feature this impressive list of winners and finalists that are available now in the collection.

History Winner:Book cover for Blood in the Water by Heather Ann Thompson

Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy by Heather Ann Thompson

The first definitive history of the infamous 1971 Attica prison uprising, the state’s violent response, and the victims’ decades-long quest for justice.

“Writing with cinematic clarity from meticulously sourced material, [Thompson] brilliantly exposes the realities of the Attica prison uprising . . . Thompson’s superb and thorough study serves as a powerful tale of the search for justice in the face of the abuses of institutional power.” —Publishers Weekly

History Finalists:

Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men From France and Spain Who Saved It by Larrie D. Ferreiro

New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America by Wendy Warren

Book cover for The Return: Fathers and Sons and the Land in Between by Hisham MatarAutobiography/Biography Winner:

The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between by Hisham Matar

An acclaimed memoir about fathers and sons, a legacy of loss, and, ultimately, healing.

“[The Return] roves back and forth in time with a freedom that conceals the intricate precision of its art. One of the greatest achievements of this outstanding book is a narrative design that keeps us hungry for new information even when we suspect exactly what has happened. . . . Mr. Matar is not a wonderful writer because his father disappeared or because his homeland is a mess: He is a brilliant narrative architect and prose stylist, his pared-down approach and measured pace a striking complement to the emotional tumult of his material.”—Wall Street Journal

Autobiography/Biography Finalists:

In the Darkroom by Susan Faludi

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

Nonfiction Winner:Book cover for Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

In Evicted, Harvard sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they struggle to keep a roof over their heads.

“It regally combines policy reporting and ethnography…. After reading Evicted, you’ll realize you cannot have a serious conversation about poverty without talking about housing. You will also have the mad urge to press it into the hands of every elected official you meet. The book is that good, and it’s that unignorable. Nothing else this year came close.” —Jennifer Senior, New York Times Critics’ Top Books of 2016

Nonfiction Finalists:

In a Different Key: The Story of Autism by John Donvan and Karen Zucker

The Politics of Mourning: Death and Honor in Arlington National Cemetery by Micki McElya

Book cover for The Underground Railroad by Colson WhiteheadFiction Winner:

The Underground Railroad: A Novel by Colson Whitehead

A magnificent tour de force chronicling a young slave’s adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South.

“[A] potent, almost hallucinatory novel… It possesses the chilling matter-of-fact power of the slave narratives collected by the Federal Writers’ Project in the 1930s, with echoes of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and brush strokes borrowed from Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka and Jonathan Swift…He has told a story essential to our understanding of the American past and the American present.”
–Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

Fiction Finalists:

Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett

The Sport of Kings by C.E. Morgan

For even more engaging reads, visit:

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Coming next week: exciting spring books for students!

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