A novel about a Vietnamese immigrant torn between his old home and his new one. An eloquent memoir of how a young man’s obsession with surfing led to a career as a globe-trotting journalist. A riveting new telling of the adventures of George A. Custer, whose famous death has overshadowed the fascinating life that came before. And a thorough, clear-eyed reporting of how the rationale for the Iraq War led to the explosive growth of ISIS.
Here are the Pulitzer Winners for Fiction, Autobiography, History, and General Nonfiction, in extraordinary company with finalists that are masterpieces in their own right.
Pulitzer Prize, Fiction, 2016. It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the Viet Cong.
Pulitzer Prize, General Nonfiction, 2016. When Jordan granted amnesty to a group of political prisoners in 1999, it little realized that among them was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a terrorist mastermind and soon the architect of an Islamist movement bent on dominating the Middle East. In Black Flags, an unprecedented account of the rise of ISIS, Joby Warrick shows how the zeal of this one man and the strategic mistakes of Presidents Bush and Obama led to the banner of ISIS being raised over huge swaths of Syria and Iraq.
Pulitzer Prize, History, 2016. In this magisterial biography, T. J. Stiles paints a portrait of Custer both deeply personal and sweeping in scope, proving how much of Custer’s legacy has been ignored. He demolishes Custer’s historical caricature, revealing a volatile, contradictory, intense person — capable yet insecure, intelligent yet bigoted, passionate yet self-destructive, a romantic individualist at odds with the institution of the military (he was court-martialed twice in six years).
It's my ideal trifecta: A memoir by a writer's writer, narrated by the author, and concerning the Pacific Ocean. This just won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography, but I've been flirting with listening to it for months. I grew up along Southern California's coast, even went to a high school with a surf team, but I never learned to surf — in fact, I was quite terrified of the idea. The New Yorker's William Finnegan wrote (and tells) a gorgeous paean to my home ocean, to the follies of feckless youth, and to the adventure of becoming a world-traveling journalist. –Erin, Audible Range Managing Editor
Pulitzer Finalist, General Nonfiction, 2016. “This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.” In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men.
Pulitzer Finalist, Fiction, 2016. She has been hailed by Michael Chabon as “the most darkly playful voice in American fiction” and by Neil Gaiman as “a national treasure.” Now Kelly Link’s eagerly awaited new collection — her first for adult listeners in a decade — proves indelibly that this bewitchingly original writer is among the finest we have.
Pulitzer Finalist, Biography/Autobiography, 2016. In The Light of the World, Elizabeth Alexander finds herself at an existential crossroads after the sudden death of her husband, who was just 50. Reflecting with gratitude on the exquisite beauty of her married life that was, grappling with the subsequent void, and feeling a reenergized devotion to her two teenage sons, Alexander channels her poetic sensibilities into a rich, lucid prose that describes a very personal and yet universal quest for meaning, understanding, and acceptance.
Pulitzer Finalist, Biography/Autobiography, 2016. If the Oceans Were Ink is Carla Power’s eye-opening story of how she and her longtime friend, Sheikh Mohammad Akram Nadwi, found a way to confront ugly stereotypes and persistent misperceptions that were cleaving their communities. Their friendship — between a secular American and a madrasa-trained sheikh — had always seemed unlikely, but now they were frustrated and bewildered by the battles being fought in their names.
Pulitzer Finalist, History, 2016. No one has ever written the history of the Defense Department’s most secret, most powerful, and most controversial military science R&D agency. In the first-ever history of the organization, New York Times best-selling author Annie Jacobsen draws on inside sources, exclusive interviews, private documents, and declassified memos to paint a picture of DARPA, or “the Pentagon’s brain,” from its Cold War inception in 1958 to the present.
Pulitzer Finalist, History, 2016. The dramatic account of one of America’s most celebrated — and controversial — military campaigns: the Doolittle Raid. In December 1941, as American forces tallied the dead at Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt gathered with his senior military counselors to plan an ambitious counterstrike against the heart of the Japanese Empire: Tokyo.
