# Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest

The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest, established in 1980, is a category of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Works are eligible during the year of their first US publication in English, though they may be written originally in languages other than English.

## Recipients

Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest winners and finalists :
| Year | Author | Title | Result |
| 1980 | Harrison Salisbury | Without Fear or Favor | Winner |
| 1981 | Jacobo Timerman | Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number | Winner |
| 1982 | Jonathan Schell | The Fate of the Earth | Winner |
| 1983 | Walker Percy | Lost in the Cosmos | Winner |
| 1984 | Jane Jacobs | Cities and the Wealth of Nations | Winner |
| 1985 | Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton | Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life | Winner |
| 1986 | Joseph Lelyveld | Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White | Winner |
| 1987 | Richard Dawkins | The Blind Watchmaker | Winner |
| 1988 | William Greider | Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country | Winner |
| 1989 | Taylor Branch | Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963 | Winner |
| 1990 | O. B. Hardison, Jr. | Disappearing through the Skylight: Culture and Technology in the Twentieth Century | Winner |
| 1990 | Vaclav Havel and Paul Wilson | Disturbing the Peace: A Conversation with Karel Huizdala | Finalist |
| 1990 | Rian Malan | My Traitor’s Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience | Finalist |
| 1990 | Rick Atkinson | The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of West Point’s Class of 1966 | Finalist |
| 1990 | Kevin Phillips | The Blind Watchmaker | Finalist |
| 1991 | E. J. Dionne, Jr. | Why Americans Hate Politics: The Death of the Democratic Process | Winner |
| 1991 | Shelby Steele | The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America | Finalist |
| 1991 | Daniel Yergin | The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power | Finalist |
| 1991 | Nicholas Lemann | The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America | Finalist |
| 1991 | Alan Ehrenhalt | The United States of Ambition: Politicians, Power, and the Pursuit of Office | Finalist |
| 1992 | Francis Fukuyama | The End of History and the Last Man | Winner |
| 1992 | Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall | Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics | Finalist |
| 1992 | James Davison Hunter | Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America | Finalist |
| 1992 | James B. Stewart | Den of Thieves | Finalist |
| 1992 | Pico Iyer | The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto | Finalist |
| 1993 | Peter Skerry | Mexican Americans: The Ambivalent Minority | Winner |
| 1993 | Doris May Lessing | African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe | Finalist |
| 1993 | Randy Shilts | Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military | Finalist |
| 1993 | Paul Kennedy | Preparing for the Twenty-First Century | Finalist |
| 1993 | David Brock | The Real Anita Hill | Finalist |
| 1994 | Henry Kissinger | Diplomacy | Winner |
| 1994 | Harry V. Jaffa | Original Intent and the Framers of the Constitution: A Disputed Question | Finalist |
| 1994 | Brent Staples | Parallel Time: Growing Up in Black and White | Finalist |
| 1994 | James Q. Wilson | The Moral Sense | Finalist |
| 1994 | Katie Roiphe | The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism on Campus | Finalist |
| 1995 | Gregory Howard Williams | Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black | Winner |
| 1995 | Michael J. Piore | Beyond Individualism: How Social Demands of the New Identity Groups Challenge American Political and | Finalist |
| 1995 | Nancy Abelmann and John Lie | Blue Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots | Finalist |
| 1995 | Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur | Growing Up With a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps | Finalist |
| 1995 | Jeffrey Abramson | We, the Jury: The Jury System and the Ideal of Democracy | Finalist |
| 1996 | Peter Maass | Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War | Winner |
| 1996 | Jonathan Harr | A Civil Action | Finalist |
| 1996 | Fox Butterfield | All God’s Children: The Bosket Family and the American Tradition of Violence | Finalist |
| 1996 | Richard Kluger | Ashes to Ashes: America’s Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris | Finalist |
| 1996 | John Hockenberry | Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs, and Declarations of Independence | Finalist |
| 1996 | David Quammen | The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions | Finalist |
| 1996 | Evan Thomas | The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA | Finalist |
| 1996 | Marc Parent | Turning Stones: My Days and Nights with Children at Risk | Finalist |
| 1997 | Anne Fadiman | The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures | Winner |
| 1997 | Jon Krakauer | Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster | Finalist |
| 1997 | Bernard Lefkowitz | Our Guys: The Glen Ridge Rape and the Secret Life of the Perfect Suburb | Finalist |
| 1997 | Randall Kennedy | Race, Crime, and the Law | Finalist |
| 1997 | Daniel Harris | The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture | Finalist |
| 1998 | Philip Gourevitch | We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda | Winner |
| 1998 | Russ Rymer | American Beach: A Saga of Race, Wealth, and Memory | Finalist |
| 1998 | Cynthia Gorney | Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars | Finalist |
| 1998 | William Finnegan | Cold New World: Growing Up in a Harder Country | Finalist |
| 1998 | Cristina Rathbone | On the Outside Looking In: A Year in an Inner-City High School | Finalist |
| 1999 | Mitchell Duneier with Ovie Carter (photographer) | Sidewalk | Winner |
| 1999 | Leila Ahmed | A Border Passage: From Cairo to America—A Woman’s Journey | Finalist |
| 1999 | Richard A. Posner | An Affair of State: The Investigation, Impeachment, and Trial of President Clinton | Finalist |
| 1999 | Mark Bowden | Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War | Finalist |
| 1999 | Joshua Hammer | Chosen By God: A Brother’s Journey | Finalist |
| 2000 | Frances FitzGerald | Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War | Winner |
| 2000 | Patrick Tierney | Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon | Finalist |
| 2000 | S.L. Price | Pitching Around Fidel: A Journey into the Heart of Cuban Sports | Finalist |
| 2000 | Ian Buruma | The Missionary and the Libertine: Love and War in East and West | Finalist |
| 2000 | Sherwin B. Nuland | The Mysteries Within: A Surgeon Explores Myth, Medicine, and the Human Body | Finalist |
| 2001 | Barbara Ehrenreich | Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America | Winner |
| 2001 | Stanley Cohen | States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering | Finalist |
| 2001 | Ann Crittenden | The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued | Finalist |
| 2001 | John W. Dean | The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment That Redefined the Supreme Court | Finalist |
| 2001 | Ron Powers | Tom and Huck Don’t Live Here Anymore | Finalist |
| 2002 | Judith Levine | Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex | Winner |
| 2002 | Timothy Ferris | Seeing in the Dark: How Backyard Stargazers Are Probing Deep Space, and Guarding Earth from Interplanetary Peril | Finalist |
| 2002 | Nicolaus Mills and Kira Brunner (editors) | The New Killing Fields: Massacre and the Politics of Intervention | Finalist |
| 2002 | Kevin Phillips | Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich | Finalist |
| 2002 | Samantha Power | A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide | Finalist |
| 2003 | Ross Terrill | The New Chinese Empire - And What It Means for the United States | Winner |
| 2003 | Carlo Rotella | Cut Time: An Education at the Fights | Finalist |
| 2003 | Anthony Swofford | Jarhead: A Marine’s Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles | Finalist |
| 2003 | Jon Krakauer | Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith | Finalist |
| 2003 | Gerald Posner | Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11 | Finalist |
| 2004 | Evan Wright | Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America and the New Face of American War | Winner |
| 2004 | Edward Conlon | Blue Blood | Finalist |
| 2004 | Michael Dirda | Bound to Please | Finalist |
| 2004 | Karen Armstrong | The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness | Finalist |
| 2004 | Ann Patchett | Truth & Beauty: A Friendship | Finalist |
| 2005 | Anthony Shadid | Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War | Winner |
| 2005 | Kurt Eichenwald | Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story | Finalist |
| 2005 | Steve Bogira | Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse | Finalist |
| 2005 | John Updike | Still Looking: Essays on American Art | Finalist |
| 2005 | Jonathan Harr | The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece | Finalist |
| 2006 | Ian Buruma | Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance | Winner |
| 2006 | Rajiv Chandrasekaran | Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone | Finalist |
| 2006 | Terri Jentz | Strange Piece of Paradise | Finalist |
| 2006 | Alicia Drake | The Beautiful Fall: Lagerfeld, Saint Laurent, and Glorious Excess in 1970s Paris | Finalist |
| 2006 | Douglas Brinkley | The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast | Finalist |
| 2007 | Elizabeth D. Samet | Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point | Winner |
| 2007 | Ishmael Beah | A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier | Finalist |
| 2007 | Tom Bissell | The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam | Finalist |
| 2007 | Ronald Brownstein | The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America | Finalist |
| 2007 | Naomi Klein | The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism | Finalist |
| 2008 | Barton Gellman | Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency | Winner |
| 2008 | Jill Bolte Taylor | My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey | Finalist |
| 2008 | Steve Coll | The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century | Finalist |
| 2008 | Jane Mayer | The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals | Finalist |
| 2008 | Dexter Filkins | The Forever War | Finalist |
| 2009 | Dave Eggers | Zeitoun | Winner |
| 2009 | Dave Cullen | Columbine | Finalist |
| 2009 | Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn | Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide | Finalist |
| 2009 | Tracy Kidder | Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness | Finalist |
| 2009 | T.R. Reid | The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care | Finalist |
| 2010 | Michael Lewis | The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine | Winner |
| 2010 | Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera | All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis | Finalist |
| 2010 | Patti Smith | Just Kids | Finalist |
| 2010 | Jonathan Alter | The Promise: President Obama, Year One | Finalist |
| 2010 | Sebastian Junger | War | Finalist |
| 2011 | Daniel Kahneman | Thinking, Fast and Slow | Winner |
| 2011 | Ioan Grillo | El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency | Finalist |
| 2011 | Alex Bellos | Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything | Finalist |
| 2011 | Anatol Lieven | Pakistan: A Hard Country | Finalist |
| 2011 | Seth Mnookin | The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear | Finalist |
| 2012 | Katherine Boo | Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum | Winner |
| 2012 | Jim Sterba | Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds | Finalist |
| 2012 | Karen Elliott House | On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines—and Future | Finalist |
| 2012 | Steve Coll | Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power | Finalist |
| 2012 | Jake Tapper | The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor | Finalist |
| 2013 | Sheri Fink | Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital | Winner |
| 2013 | Charlie LeDuff | Detroit: An American Autopsy | Finalist |
| 2013 | Lawrence Wright | Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief | Finalist |
| 2013 | Barry Siegel | Manifest Injustice: The True Story of a Convicted Murderer and the Lawyers Who Fought for His Freedom | Finalist |
| 2013 | David Finkel | Thank You for Your Service | Finalist |
| 2014 | Jeff Hobbs | The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League | Winner |
| 2014 | Atul Gawande | Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End | Finalist |
| 2014 | Bryan Stevenson | Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption | Finalist |
| 2014 | Matt Taibbi | The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap | Finalist |
| 2014 | Héctor Tobar | Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free | Finalist |
| 2015 | Sarah Chayes | Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security | Winner |
| 2015 | Joe Domanick | Blue: The LAPD and the Battle to Redeem American Policing | Finalist |
| 2015 | Sandy Tolan | Children of the Stone: The Power of Music in a Hard Land | Finalist |
| 2015 | Sam Quinones | Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic | Finalist |
| 2015 | Stephen Witt | How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century | Finalist |
| 2016 | Svetlana Alexievich with Bela Shayevich (trans.) | Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets | Winner |
| 2016 | Robert F. Worth | A Rage for Order: The Middle East in Turmoil, from Tahrir Square to ISIS | Finalist |
| 2016 | Ben Rawlence | City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp | Finalist |
| 2016 | Jane Mayer | Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right | Finalist |
| 2016 | Matthew Desmond | Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City | Finalist |
| 2017 | Nancy MacLean | Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America | Winner |
| 2017 | James Forman Jr. | Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America | Finalist |
| 2017 | Rick Wartzman | The End of Loyalty: The Rise and Fall of Good Jobs in America | Finalist |
| 2017 | Lauren Markham | The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life | Finalist |
| 2017 | Ta-Nehisi Coates | We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy | Finalist |
| 2018 | Francisco Cantu | The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches From the Border | Winner |
| 2019 | Emily Bazelon | Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration | Winner |
| 2019 | Mark Arax | The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California | Finalist |
| 2019 | Ronan Farrow | Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators | Finalist |
| 2019 | Dina Nayeri | The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You | Finalist |
| 2019 | Rachel Louise Snyder | No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us | Finalist |
| 2020 | Isabel Wilkerson | Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents | Winner |
| 2020 | Brittany K. Barnett | A Knock at Midnight: A Story of Hope, Justice, and Freedom | Finalist |
| 2020 | Karla Cornejo Villavicencio | The Undocumented Americans | Finalist |
| 2020 | Christine Montross | Waiting for an Echo: The Madness of American Incarceration | Finalist |
| 2020 | Jacob Soboroff | Separated: Inside an American Tragedy | Finalist |
| 2021 | Adam Schiff | Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could | Winner |
| 2021 | Andrea Elliott | Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City | Finalist |
| 2021 | Heather McGhee | The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together | Finalist |
| 2021 | Reuben Jonathan Miller | Halfway Home: Race, Punihsment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration | Finalist |
| 2021 | Evan Osnos | Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury | Finalist |
| 2022 | Dahlia Lithwick | Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America | Winner |
| 2022 | Anand Giridharadas | The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy | Finalist |
| 2022 | Sarah Kendzior | They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent | Finalist |
| 2022 | Luke Mogelson | The Storm is Here: An American Crucible | Finalist |
| 2022 | Dorothy Roberts | Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families — and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World | Finalist |
| 2023 | Roxanna Asgarian | We Were Once A Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America | Winner |
| 2023 | Bettina L. Love | Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal | Finalist |
| 2023 | Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson | American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15 | Finalist |
| 2023 | Christina Sharpe | Ordinary Notes | Finalist |
| 2023 | Raja Shehadeh | We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir | Finalist |