The Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards
For more information about the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards,
click here.
2017
The fortunes by Peter Ho Davies
2017
Olio by Tyehimba Jess
2017
The association of
small bombs by Karan Mahajan
2017
Hidden figures : the
American dream and the untold story of the Black women mathematicians who helped
win the space race by Margot Lee Shetterly
2017
Isabel Allende Lifetime Achievement Award
2016
The gay revolution :
the story of the struggle by Lillian Faderman
2016
The jazz palace : a
novel by Mary Morris
2016
Heaven by Rowan Ricardo Phillips
2016
What the eye hears : a history of
tap dancing by Brian Seibert
2015
The new testament by Jericho Brown
2015
Hard love province :
poems by Marilyn Chin
2015
David Brion
Davis Lifetime Achievement Award
2015
A tale of two plantations : slave
life and labor in Jamaica and Virginia by Richard S. Dunn
2015 A brief history of seven killings
by Marlon James
2014
Wilson Harris Lifetime Achievement Award
2014 George Laming Lifetime Achievement
Award
2014
A constellation of
vital phenomena : a novel by Anthony Marra
2014
The big smoke by Adrian Matejka
2014 My promised land : the triumph and tragedy of
Israel by Ari Shavit
2013 My favorite warlord by Eugene
Gloria
2013 Kind one : a novel by Laird Hunt
2013
The yellow birds : a
novel by Kevin Powers
2013
Far from the tree :
parents, children and the search for identity by Andrew Solomon
2013
Wole
Soyinka Lifetime Achievement Award
2012 American oracle : the Civil War in
the civil rights era by David Blight
2012 Half-blood blues : a novel by Esi Edugyan
2012
Arnold Rampersad
Lifetime Achievement Award
2012
Less than human : why
we demean, enslave, and
exterminate others by David Livingstone Smith
2011
Atlas of the transatlantic
slave trade by David Eltis and David Richardson
2011
Great house by
Nicole Krauss
2011 The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia by Mary Helen
Stefaniak
2011
John Edgar Wideman
Lifetime Achievement Award
2011
The warmth of other
suns : the epic story of America's great migration by Isabel Wilkerson
2010 Elizabeth Alexander Lifetime
Achievement Award
2010
Burnt shadows by Kamila Shamsie
2010
William Julius Wilson Lifetime Achievement Award
2010 Oprah Winfrey Lifetime Achievement
Award
2009
The plague of doves by Louise Erdrich
2009
The Hemingses of
Monticello : an American family by Annette Gordon-Reed
2009
The boat by Nam
Le
2009
Paule
Marshall Lifetime Achievement Award
2008
Nonfiction:
Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi
Ali; Fiction: The brief wondrous
life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz; Fiction:
The reluctant
fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid; Lifetime Achievement Award:
William Melvin Kelley
2007
Fiction:
Half of a yellow sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie;
Fiction: Blue front by Martha Collins; Nonfiction:
Steel drivin' man :
John Henry, the untold story of an American legend by Scott Reynolds Nelson; Lifetime Achievement Award:
Taylor Branch
2006
Nonfiction:
New York burning :
liberty, slavery, and conspiracy in eighteenth-century Manhattan by Jill Lepore;
Fiction: On beauty : a novel by Zadie
Smith;
Lifetime Achievement Award:
William Demby
2005
Fiction:
The dew breaker by Edwidge Danticat;
Nonfiction: M•A•C•N•O•L•I•A by A. Van Jordan; Nonfiction:
Unforgivable
blackness : the rise and fall of Jack Johnson by Geoffrey C. Ward; Lifetime Achievement Award:
August Wilson
2004
Nonfiction:
Generations of
captivity : a history of African-American slaves by Ira Berlin; Fiction:
The known world
by Edward P. Jones; Nonfiction:
Random family : love,
drugs, trouble, and coming of age in the Bronx by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc; Lifetime Achievement Award:
Derek Walcott
2003 Fiction: The emperor of Ocean Park by
Stephen L. Carter; Nonfiction:
A problem from hell :
America and the age of genocide by Samantha Power; Fiction: World hotel by Reetika Vazirani; Lifetime Achievement Award:
Adrienne Kennedy
2002
Nonfiction:
Q : the autobiography
of Quincy Jones by Quincy Jones; Nonfiction:
Vernon can read! : a
memoir by Vernon E. Jordan Jr.; Fiction:
John Henry Days : a
novel by Colson Whitehead; Lifetime Achievement Award: Jay Wright
2001
Nonfiction:
W.E.B. Du Bois : the
fight for equality and the American century, 1919-1963 by David Levering
Lewis; Nonfiction: Rope burns : stories from the
corner by F.X. Toole; Lifetime Achievement Award:
Lucille Clifton
2000
Fiction:
A gesture life by Chang-rae
Lee; Nonfiction: Out of place : a
memoir by Edward W. Said; Lifetime Achievement Award:
Ernest J. Gaines
1999
Fiction:
Cloudsplitter : a
novel by Russell Banks; Nonfiction:
Walking with the wind
: a memoir of the movement by John Lewis; Lifetime Achievement Award:
John Hope Franklin
1998
Nonfiction:
The black notebooks :
an interior journey by Toi Derricotte; Fiction: Always outnumbered, always
outgunned by Walter Mosley; Lifetime Achievement Award:
Gordon Parks
1997
Fiction:
The autobiography of
my mother by Jamaica Kincaid; Nonfiction:
The color of water :
a Black man's tribute to his white mother by James McBride; Lifetime Achievement Award:
Albert L. Murray
1996
Fiction:
All souls' rising by Madison Smartt
Bell; Nonfiction: Amazing grace : the
lives of children and the conscience of a nation by Jonathan Kozol; Lifetime Achievement Award:
Dorothy West
1995
Fiction:
Sweetbitter : a novel
by Reginald Gibbons; Nonfiction:
Parallel time :
growing up in black and white by Brent Staples; Nonfiction:
The science and
politics of racial research by William H. Tucker
1994
Fiction:
The Latin deli :
prose and by Judith Ortiz Cofer; Nonfiction:
W.E.B. Du
Bois--biography of a race, 1868-1919 by David Levering Lewis; Nonfiction:
A different mirror :
a history of multicultural America by Ronald Takaki (rev. ed.
(2008) here)
1993
Nonfiction:
In my father's house
: Africa in the philosophy of culture by Kwame Anthony Appiah; Fiction:
Woman hollering creek
and other stories by Sandra Cisneros; Nonfiction:
The civilization of
the goddess : the world of Old Europe by Marija Gimbutas
1992
Landmark achievement:
Invisible man (1952) by Ralph Ellison Landmark;
Nonfiction: Praying for sheetrock
: a work of by Melissa Faye Greene; Nonfiction: Lessons and legacies : the meaning
of the Holocaust in a changing world, edited by Peter Hayes; Nonfiction:
The IQ mythology :
class, race, gender, and inequality by Elaine Mensh and Harry Mensh;
Fiction: The homeplace : poems by Marilyn
Nelson
1991
Nonfiction:
African ark : the
peoples and ancient cultures of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa by Carol
Beckwith and Angela Fisher; Nonfiction:
Gunnar Myrdal and
America's conscience : social engineering and racial liberalism, 1938-1987
by Walter A. Jackson; Nonfiction:
The arrogance of
faith : Christianity and race in America from the colonial era to the twentieth
century by Forrest G. Wood
1990
Nonfiction:
The image of the
Black in Western art : vol. 4, part 1, Slaves and liberators, and
vol. 4, part 2, Black models and white myths by Hugh Honour; Fiction:
The women of plums :
poems in the voices of slave women by Dolores Kendrick
1989
Nonfiction:
Parting the waters :
America in the King years, 1954-63 by Taylor Branch; Nonfiction:
The Schomburg
library of nineteenth-century Black
women writers (30 volumes) by Henry Louis Gates Jr.; Nonfiction:
A life in the
struggle : Ivory Perry and the culture of opposition by George Lipsitz;
Nonfiction: Dreamings : the art
of aboriginal Australia by Peter Sutton
1988
Nonfiction:
Living Maya text
by Walter F. Morris, Jr. ; photographs by Jeffrey J. Foxx; Fiction:
A sport of nature : a
novel by Nadine Gordimer; Fiction:
Beloved by Toni
Morrison; Nonfiction: Whose votes count? :
affirmative action and minority voting rights by Abigail M. Thernstrom
1987
Nonfiction:
The life of Langston
Hughes by Arnold Rampersad; Nonfiction:
Spirit of survival by Gail Sheehy
1986 Nonfiction: Kachinas : a Hopi artist's documentary by Clifford Bahnimptewa
and Barton Wright; Nonfiction:
Nazis in Skokie :
freedom, community and the First Amendment by Donald Alexander Downs;
Nonfiction: Feedom rising : life
under apartheid through the
eyes of an American on a four-year clandestine journey through southern Africa
by James North
1985 Nonfiction: Mouroir : mirrornotes of a novel by Breyten
Breytenbach; Nonfiction:
The abandonment of
the Jews : America and the Holocaust, 1941-1945 by David S. Wyman
1984
Nonfiction:
Pre-Columbian art by Jose Alcina Franch;
Nonfiction: From immigrants to ethnics : the Italian Americans
by Humbert S. Nelli
1983
Nonfiction:
Hunger of memory :
the education of Richard Rodriguez : an autobiography by Richard Rodriguez;
Nonfiction: Aké : the years of
childhood by Wole Soyinka
1982
Nonfiction:
Evangelist of race :
the Germanic vision of Houston Stewart Chamberlain by Geoffrey Field;
Nonfiction: People of the sacred mountain : a
history of the northern Cheyenne chiefs and warrior societies, 1830-1879 with an
epilogue 1969-1974 by Peter John Powell
1981
Nonfiction:
Maasai text by
Tepilit Ole Saitoti ; photos by Carol Beckwith; Nonfiction:
Song from the earth :
American Indian painting by Jamake Highwater
1980
Nonfiction:
The ecology of human
development : experiments by nature and design by Urie Bronfenbrenner;
Nonfiction: The !Kung San : men, women, and work in a foraging
society by Richard Borshay Lee
1979 Nonfiction: The Bushmen : san hunters and
herders of Southern Africa, edited by Phillip V. Tobias
1978
Nonfiction:
The legacy of Malthus
: the social costs of the new scientific racism by Allan Chase; Nonfiction:
The woman warrior :
memoirs of a girlhood among ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston
1977
Nonfiction: Simple justice : the
history of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's struggle for equality by Richard Kluger
(Rev. and expanded ed. (2004)
here);
Nonfiction: Years of infamy : the
untold story of America's concentration camps by Michi Weglyn
(Updated ed. (1996)
here)
1976
Nonfiction:
The war against the
Jews, 1933–1945 by Lucy S. Dawidowicz; Nonfiction:
The Arabs : their
history, aims, and challenge to the industrialized world by Thomas Kiernan;
Nonfiction: The myth of the
Jewish race by Raphael Patai and Jennifer P. Wing
1975
Nonfiction:
Roll, Jordan, roll;
the world the slaves made by Eugene D. Genovese; Nonfiction:
The Aryan myth; a
history of racist and nationalist ideas in Europe by Leon Poliakov
1974 Nonfiction: Doctor and the Aborigines by Charles Duguid;
Nonfiction: The unfinished quest
of Richard Wright by Michel Fabre; Nonfiction:
Justice in South Africa by Albie
Sachs; Nonfiction: The Dreyfus case: a
documentary history by Louis Snyder
1973 Nonfiction: The water is wide by Pat Conroy;
Nonfiction: Men and brothers;
Anglo-American antislavery cooperation by Betty Fladeland; Nonfiction:
Behind ghetto walls;
Black families in a federal slum by Lee Rainwater
1972
Nonfiction:
The Black image in
the white mind; the debate on Afro-American character and destiny, 1817-1914
by George M. Fredrickson; Nonfiction:
Outcasts from
evolution; scientific attitudes of racial inferiority, 1859-1900 by John S.
Haller Jr.; Nonfiction:
The healing of a
nation by David Loye; Nonfiction: The autobiography of an unknown South African by Naboth Mokgatle;
Nonfiction: Slavery in the
structure of American politics, 1765-1820 by Donald L. Robinson
1971
Nonfiction:
A history of the
African people by Robert W. July; Nonfiction:
Black freedom : the
nonviolent abolitionists from 1830 through the Civil War by Carleton Mabee;
Nonfiction: La raza: the Mexican
Americans by Stan Steiner; Nonfiction:
The death and rebirth
of the Seneca by Anthony F.C. Wallace
1970 Nonfiction: Scottsboro : a tragedy of the American South by Dan T. Carter
(rev. ed. (2007) here);
Nonfiction: Custer died for your
sins : an Indian manifesto by
Vine Deloria Jr.; Nonfiction:
The Negro in
Brazilian society by Florestan
Fernandes; Nonfiction:
The great betrayal;
the evacuation of the Japanese-Americans during World War II by Audrie Girdner and Anne Loftis
1969 Nonfiction: Negro and white children : a psychological study in
the rural South by E. Earl Baughman and W. Grant Dahlstrom; Fiction:
In the Mecca : poems
by Gwendolyn Brooks; Nonfiction:
The Leo Frank case by Leonard Dinnerstein;
Nonfiction: The American Indian
today by Stuart Levine and Nancy O. Lurie
1968
Nonfiction:
Warrant for genocide;
the myth of the Jewish world-conspiracy and the Protocols of the elders of Zion
by Norman Cohn; Nonfiction:
Children of crisis; a
study of courage and fear by Robert Coles; Nonfiction:
The destruction of
the European Jews by Raul Hilberg (Rev. ed. (1985)
here) (3d ed.
(2003) here);
Nonfiction: The Jews among the
nations by Erich Kahler
1967
Nonfiction:
The problem of
slavery in Western culture by David Brion Davis; Nonfiction:
La vida; a Puerto
Rican family in the culture of poverty--San Juan and New York by Oscar Lewis
1966
Nonfiction:
The unity of mankind
in Greek thought by H.C. Baldry; Nonfiction:
Manchild in the
promised land by Claude Brown; Nonfiction:
The autobiography of
Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley; Nonfiction: Your heredity and environment by Amram Scheinfeld
1965
Nonfiction:
Assimilation in
American life : the role of race, religion, and national origins by Milton
M. Gordon; Nonfiction:
The struggle for
equality; abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction by
James M. McPherson; Nonfiction:
A history of the Jews by Abram L. Sachar (5th ed (1970)
here);
Nonfiction: Mississippi : the
closed society by James W. Silver
1964
Nonfiction: Beyond the melting
pot; the Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City
by Daniel P. Moynihan and Nathan Glazer (2nd ed (1970)
here);
Nonfiction: The new world of
Negro Americans by Harold R. Isaacs; Nonfiction: Faith and prejudice : intergroup
problems in Protestant curricula by Bernhard E. Olson
1963
Nonfiction:
Mankind evolving :
the evolution of the human species by Theodosius Dobzhansky
1962 Fiction: The forbidden man : a novel by
Gina Allen; Nonfiction:
Antislavery : the
crusade for freedom in America by
Dwight L. Dumond; Nonfiction:
Black like me John Howard Griffin
(another edition is
here)
1961
Nonfiction:
To Sir, with love
by E.R. Braithwaite; Nonfiction:
The reluctant African
Louis E. Lomax
1960
Nonfiction:
The lost cities of
Africa by Basil Davidson; Nonfiction: I speak for myself by John Haynes
Holmes
1959
Nonfiction:
Stride toward freedom
: the Montgomery story by Martin Luther King Jr.; Nonfiction: Racial and cultural minorities; an analysis of
prejudice and discrimination by George Eaton
Simpson and J. Milton Yinger
1958
Nonfiction:
White mother by Jessie B. Sams;
Nonfiction: Handbook on race relations by
South African Institute of Race Relations
1957
Nonfiction: The masters and the
slaves [Casa-Grande & Senzala] : a study in the development of Brazilian
civilization by Gilberto Freyre (2nd ed. (1966)
here);
Nonfiction: Naught for your comfort by Trevor
Huddleston
1956 Nonfiction: A manual of intergroup relations
by John P. Dean and Alex Rosen; Nonfiction: They wait in darkness by George W.
Shepherd Jr.
1955 Nonfiction: Report on Africa by Oden Meeker;
Nonfiction: Cultural difference
and medical care; the case of the Spanish-speaking people of the Southwest
by Lyle Saunders
1954 Nonfiction: Struggle for Africa by Vernon
Bartlett; Fiction: Simple takes a wife by Langston
Hughes
1953
Nonfiction:
People of the Deer by Farley Mowat;
Nonfiction: A many-splendored thing by Han Suyin
1952 Fiction: Race relations by Brewton Berry;
Nonfiction: Venture to the interior by Laurens van der
Post
1951 Nonfiction: Twilight in South Africa by Henry
Gibbs; Fiction: The wall by John
Hersey
1950
Nonfiction: Punishment without
crime; what you can do about prejudice by S. Andhil Fineberg; Fiction:
Your most humble
servant by Shirley Graham
1949
Nonfiction:
Anatomy of paradise:
Hawaii and the islands of the South Seas by J.C. Furnas; Fiction:
Cry, the beloved
country by Alan Paton
1948
Nonfiction:
The Indians of the Americas
by John Collier; Fiction: The other room by Worth Tuttle Hedden
1947
Fiction:
East River by Sholem
Asch; Nonfiction: Latin Americans in Texas by Pauline R. Kibbe
1946
Nonfiction: Black metropolis : a
study of Negro life in a northern city by Horace Cayton and St. Clair Drake
(Rev. ed. (1993) here);
Nonfiction: One nation by Wallace Stegner,
with the editors of Look
1945
Fiction:
Earth and high heaven by Gwethalyn
Graham; Nonfiction:
An American dilemma:
the Negro problem and modern democracy by Gunnar Myrdal
(20th anniversary ed. (1962)
here)
1944
'New world a-coming';
inside black America by Roi Ottley;
The world of Sholom
Aleichem by Maurice Samuel
1943
Dust tracks on a road by Zora
Neale Hurston
1942
Quest : an
autobiography by Leopold Infeld (2nd ed. (1980)
here);
The Haitian people by James G. Leyburn (2nd ed. (1966)
here)
1941
From many lands by Louis Adamic
1940
The Negro family in
the United States by E. Franklin Frazier
1939 No Award
1938 No Award
1937
We Europeans; a
survey of 'racial' problems by A.C. Haddon and Julian Huxley
1936
Negro politicians;
the rise of Negro politics in Chicago by Harold Gosnell