Pulitzer Prize

Pulitzer Prize 2009

Fiction       History       Biography/Autobiography       Poetry       General Nonfiction

Fiction
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Random House) 
A collection of 13 short stories set in small-town Maine that packs a cumulative emotional wallop, bound together by polished prose and by Olive, the title character, blunt, flawed and fascinating.

Also nominated as finalists in this category were:

"The Plague of Doves" by Louise Erdrich (HarperCollins), a haunting novel that explores racial discord, loss of land and changing fortunes in a corner of North Dakota where Native Americans and whites share a tangled history.

"All Souls" by Christine Schutt (Harcourt), a memorable novel that focuses on the senior class at an exclusive all-girl Manhattan prep school where a beloved student battles a rare cancer, fiercely honest, carefully observed and subtly rendered.

History
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed (W.W. Norton & Company)
A painstaking exploration of a sprawling multi-generation slave family that casts provocative new light on the relationship between Sally Hemings and her master, Thomas Jefferson.

Also nominated as finalists in this category were:

“This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War,” by Drew Gilpin Faust (Alfred A. Knopf), a deeply researched, gracefully written examination of how a divided nation struggled to comprehend the meaning and practical consequences of unprecedented human carnage.

“The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s,” by G. Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot (The Penguin Press), an elegantly written account of a brief period in American history that left a profoundly altered national landscape.

Biography or Autobiography
American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham (Random House)
An unflinching portrait of a not always admirable democrat but a pivotal president, written with an agile prose that brings the Jackson saga to life.

Also nominated as finalists in this category were:

“Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt,” by H.W. Brands (Doubleday), a richly textured and highly readable exploration of the inner Roosevelt, presented with analytical acuity and flashes of originality.

“The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century,” by Steve Coll (The Penguin Press), an epic tale extending far beyond Osama Bin Laden and the calamity of 9/11, rooted in meticulous research and written with an urgency, clarity and flair that entertains as easily as it educates.

Poetry
The Shadow of Sirius by W.S. Merwin (Copper Canyon Press)
A collection of luminous, often tender poems that focus on the profound power of memory.

Also nominated as finalists in this category were:

“Watching the Spring Festival,” by Frank Bidart (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), a book of lyric poems that evinces compassion for the human condition as it explores the constraints that limit the possibility of people changing the course of their lives.

“What Love Comes To: New & Selected Poems,” by Ruth Stone (Copper Canyon Press), a collection of poems that give rich drama to ordinary experience, deepening our sense of what it means to be human.

General Nonfiction
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon (Doubleday)
A precise and eloquent work that examines a deliberate system of racial suppression and that rescues a multitude of atrocities from virtual obscurity.

Also nominated as finalists in this category were:

“Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age,” by Arthur Herman (Bantam Books), an authoritative, deeply researched book that achieves an extraordinary balance in weighing two mighty protagonists against each other.

“The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe,” by William I. Hitchcock (Free Press), a heavily documented exploration of the overlooked suffering of noncombatants in the victory over Nazi Germany, written with the dash of a novelist and the authority of a scholar.