Andrew Carnegie Medal
 
For Excellence In Non-Fiction
2022 Winner
A Little Devil in America : Notes in Praise of Black Performance
by Hanif Abdurraqib

A poet, essayist and cultural critic presents a profound and lasting reflection on how black performance is inextricably woven into the fabric of American culture.
2022 Shortlist
Four Hundred Souls : A Community History of African America, 1619-2019
by Ibram X. Kendi

Co-edited by the National Book Award-winning author of How to Be an Antiracist, a 400-year chronicle of African-American history is written in five-year segments as documented by 80 multidisciplinary historians, artists and writers.
Seek You : A Journey Through American Loneliness
by Kristen Radtke

In Seek You, Radtke looks at the very real current crisis of loneliness through the lenses of gender, violence, technology, and art. Ranging from the invention of the laugh-track to Instagram to Harry Harlow's experiments in which infant monkeys were given inanimate surrogate mothers, Radtke uncovers all she can about how we engage with friends, family, and strangers alike, and what happens--to us and to them--when we disengage. 
2021 Winner
Fathoms : the World in the Whale
by Rebecca Giggs

Blending together natural history, philosophy and science, this stunning meditation on the extraordinary lives of whales takes readers on an exploration of the natural world to reveal what whales can teach us about ourselves, our planet and our relationship to other species. 
2021 Shortlist
Just Us : An American Conversation
by Claudia Rankine

"This brilliant arrangement of essays, poems, and images includes the voices and rebuttals of others: white men in first class responding to, and with, their white male privilege; a friend's explanation of her infuriating behavior at a play; and women confronting the political currency of dying their hair blond, all running alongside fact-checked notes and commentary that complements Rankine's own text, complicating notions of authority and who gets the last word"
Memorial Drive : A Daughter's Memoir
by Natasha D. Trethewey

The former U.S. poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Native Guard shares a chillingly personal memoir about the brutal murder of her mother at the hands of her former stepfather. 
2020 Winner
Midnight in Chernobyl : The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster
by Adam Higginbotham

Draws on 20 years of research, recently declassified files and interviews with first-person survivors in an account of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster that also reveals how propaganda and secrets have created additional dangers. 
2020 Shortlist
Figuring
by Maria Popova

The Brain Pickings science writer and host of The Universe in Verse explores the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of historical figures from four centuries, from astronomer Johannes Kepler to biologist Rachel Carson.
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee : Native America From 1890 to the Present
by David Treuer

An anthropologist's chronicle of Native American life from the Wounded Knee massacre to the present traces the unprecedented resourcefulness and reinvention of distinct tribe cultures that assimilated into mainstream life to preserve Native identity.
2019 Winner
Heavy : An American Memoir
by Kiese Laymon

An essayist and novelist explores what the weight of a lifetime of secrets, lies and deception does to a black body, a black family and a nation teetering on the brink of moral collapse.
2019 Shortlist
The Line Becomes A River : Dispatches From the Border
by Francisco Cantú

An award-winning writer and former agent for the U.S. Border Patrol describes his upbringing as the son of a park ranger and grandson of a Mexican immigrant, who, upon joining the Border Patrol, encountered the violence and political rhetoric that overshadows life for both migrants and the police.
Dopesick : Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America
by Beth Macy

In a book that includes deeply human and unforgettable portraits of the families and first responders affected, the author takes readers into the epicenter of its America's more than 20-year struggle with opioid addiction. By the author of the national best-seller Factory Man. 
2018 Winner 
You Don't Have to Say You Love Me : A Memoir
by Sherman Alexie

The National Book Award-winning author of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian presents a literary memoir of poems, essays and intimate family photos that reflect his complicated feelings about his disadvantaged childhood on a Native American reservation with his siblings and alcoholic parents.
2018 Shortlist 
The Doomsday Machine : Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner
by Daniel Ellsberg

The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Senior Fellow and iconic whistleblower who revealed the Pentagon Papers presents an eyewitness exposé of the dangers of America's secret, long-standing nuclear policy.
Killers of the Flower Moon : the Osage murders and the birth of the FBI
by David Grann

The best-selling author of The Lost City of Z presents a true account of the early 20th-century murders of dozens of wealthy Osage and law-enforcement officials, citing the contributions and missteps of a fledgling FBI that eventually uncovered one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.
 2017 Winner
Evicted : Poverty and Profit in the American City
by Matthew Desmond

A Harvard sociologist examines the under-represented challenge of eviction as a formidable cause of poverty in America, revealing how millions of people are wrongly forced from their homes and reduced to cycles of extreme disadvantage that are reinforced by dysfunctional legal systems.
2017 Shortlist
Blood at the Root : A Racial Cleansing in America
by Patrick Phillips

A harrowing testament to the deep roots of racial violence in America chronicles acts of racial cleansing in early 20th-century Forsyth County, Georgia, where the murder of a young girl led to mob lynchings, acts of terror against black workers, and violent protests by night riders trying to enforce whites-only citizenship.
The Firebrand and the First Lady : Portrait of a Friendship : Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice
by Patricia Bell-Scott

Describes the unlikely friendship between First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Pauli Murray, a granddaughter of a mixed race slave and a lesbian, who became a lawyer and civil rights pioneer, and the important work they each did, taking stands for justice and freedom.
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