Finalists announced for Lukas Prizes for nonfiction books

Investigative and historical works on fracking, music piracy and education reform are among the nominees this year for J. Anthony Lukas prizes given for outstanding nonfiction books. Finalists in three categories were announced Monday by Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Honors include the $30,000 J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award for a book currently being worked on, the $10,000 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize for a book of political or social interest, and the $10,000 Mark Lynton History Prize. Nominees include Adam Briggle's "A Field Philosopher's Guide to Fracking" for the Lukas Book Prize and Timothy Snyder's "Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning" for Lynton history award.

Winners will be announced March 30.

The Lukas project is named for the late Pulitzer Prize winning author and journalist. Established in 1998, the awards are sponsored by the family of the late Mark Lynton, a businessman and historian. In the Work-in-Progress category, finalists are Blaire Briody's "The New Wild West: Black Gold, Fracking and Life in a North Dakota Boomtown"; Sasha Issenberg's "The Engagement: A Quarter-Century of Defending, Defining, and Expanding Marriage in America"; Steve Luxenberg's "Separate"; Steve Oney's "American Air"; and Meredith Wadman's "The Cells and the Scientists." For the Lukas Book Prize, the nominees besides Briggle are Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer's "$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America"; Dale Rusakoff's "The Prize: Who's in Charge of America's Schools?"; Susan Southard's "Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War"; and Stephen Witt's "How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century, and the Patient Zero of Piracy."

For the history award, the finalists besides Snyder are Sean McMeekin's "The Ottoman Endgame: War, Revolution, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, 1908-1923"; Jan Jarboe Russell's "The Train to Crystal City: The FDR's Secret Prison Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II"; T. J. Stiles' "Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America"; and Nikolaus Wachsmann's "KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps."