City of Sunnyvale

2003
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: an African Childhood
Fuller, Alexandra
A white African girl's childhood during the Rhodesian Civil War (1971-1979) at which time the country of Zimbabwe was created.

2004
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Nafisi, Azar
In revolutionary Iran, seven female students meet secretly at their professor's house to study great works of Western literature.

2005
Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II
Kurson, Robert
Two deep-sea wreck divers discover a World War II U-boat off the coast of New Jersey and spend seven years looking for the boat's identity.

Kiriyama Prize

2000
Things That Must Not Be Forgotten: A Childhood in Wartime China
Kwan, Michael David
A Eurasian boy's isolated and privileged childhood in Beijing and the effect of World War II on his life and family.

2001
River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze
Hessler, Peter
A Peace Corps teacher's account of his two years in Fuling, a town on the Yangtze River in Sichuan province.

2002
From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey
Khoo Thwe, Pascal
A young Burmese tribesman, who has been a guerilla fighter against his country's dictatorship, meets and is rescued by a Cambridge don, whom he meets while working as a waiter. He goes on to study at Cambridge University.

2005
Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found
Mehta, Suketu
After a 21 year absence, the author returns to his native Bombay (Mumbai) and, as both an insider and newcomer, chronicles life in the world's third largest city.

National Book Award

2000
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
Philbrick, Nathaniel
The 19th century Pacific whaling industry is explored through the story of the whaleship Essex that was sunk in 1820 by an eighty ton sperm whale. This disaster inspired Herman Melville's Moby Dick.

2002
Master of the Senate
Caro, Robert A.
This third volume of The Years of Lyndon Johnson covers Johnson's U.S. Senate career (1949-1961) where he engineered the 1957 Civil Rights Act.

2003
Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy
Eire, Carlos
A Yale historian's memoir of his boyhood in 1950s Cuba and the dramatic change to his life when he was separated from his parents and sent to the United States after Castro took over the country.

2006
The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of the Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
Egan, Timothy
The Great Depression's Dust Bowl catastrophe told through the lives of twelve families and their communities.

National Book Critics Circle Award

2000
Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan
Bix, Herbert P.
A controversial biography that presents the Japanese Emperor Hirohito as far more politically involved than popular stories portray him to be.

2001
Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The Masking of the Life of Dr. Johnson
Sisman, Adam
The story of the making of Boswell's Life of Johnson as well as a biography of its author, James Boswell.

2002
The Power of Place
Browne, Janet
Volume II of Charles Darwin: A Biography focuses on the last half of Darwin's life (1858-82), including the publication of On the Origin of Species.

2003
Khrushchev: The Man and His Era
Taubman, William
This first comprehensive biography of the late Soviet leader includes both political and psychological analysis.

2004
De Kooning: An American Master
Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan
Examines the life and work of the Dutch-born abstract expressionist and also gives an account of the early twentieth century New York art world.

2005
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
This biography of Oppenheimer focuses not only on his work with the Manhattan Project but on his life before and after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

Them: A Memoir of Parents
Gray, Francine du Plessix Gray
The story of the author's Russian emigre mother who became a famous had designer; her father, an artistocratic Frenchman who was killed by the Nazis; and her Russian emigre stepfather who rose to the top of the Conde Nast publishing conglomerate.

The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
Mendelsohn, Daniel
The author searches worldwide to learn about the life and death of his great uncle and his family who were killed during the Holocaust.

2006
James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon
Phillips, Julie
Alice Sheldon assumed the persona of James Tiptree, Jr. and became a noted science fiction writer who wrote as a "man" for years before her gender was revealed.

Pulitzer Prize

2000
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II
Dower, John W.
The story of the American occupation of Japan (1945-1952) and a portrait of post-war Japan's politics, society and culture.

Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945
Kennedy, David
A survey focusing on the sixteen years which encompassed the Great Depression, New Deal and World War II. (Vol. 9 of the Oxford History of the United States).

Vera: (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)
Schiff, Stacy
A biography of the life of writer Vladimir Nabokov's wife Vera, and her devotion to his literary career during their 52-year marriage.

2001
Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan
Bix, Herbert P.
A controversial biography that presents the Japanese Emperor Hirohito as far more politically involved than popular stories portray him to be.

Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
Ellis, Joseph J.
Six decisive events in the 1790s explore the personalities and politics of John Adams, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and George Washington.

W.E.B Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century
Lewis, David Levering
The second volume of the life of the scholar and political theorist who co-founded the NAACP and was also dedicated to worldwide human rights and Pan-Africanism.

2002
John Adams
McCullogh, David
The life of one of the Founding Fathers who later became the second president of the United States.

The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America
Menand, Louis
How Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Charles Sander Pierce and John Dewey created a philosophy of pragmatism after the Civil War.

2003
An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943
Atkinson, Rick
The story of the Allied invasion of North Africa where the United States Army gained experience in modern warfare.

Master of the Senate
Caro, Robert A.
This third volume of The Years of Lyndon Johnson covers Johnson's U.S. Senate career (1949-1961) when he engineered the 1957 Civil Rights Act.

2004
Khrushchev: The Man and His Era
Taubman, William
This first comprehensive biography of the late Soviet leader includes both political and psychological analysis.

2005
Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001
Coll, Steve
The story of the CIA's covert wars in Afghanistan and the emergence of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

Washington's Crossing
Fischer, David Hackett
A military history of George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River in December 1776 that resulted in victories at Trenton and Princeton.

De Kooning: An American Master
Steven, Mark and Annalyn Swan
Examines the life and work of the Dutch-born abstract expressionist and also gives an account of the early twentieth century New York art world.

2006
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
This biography of Oppenheimer focuses not only on his work with the Manhattan Project but on his life before and after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya
Elkins, Caroline
Documents the brutal 8-year British war against the Mau Mau independence movement which resulted in the deaths of up to 300,000 Kenyans and also the internment of 1.5 million Kikuyu, the largest ethnic group in Kenya.

2007
The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher
Applegate, Debby
The charismatic preacher, abolitionist and intellectual who became involved in a national scandal.

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
Wright, Lawrence
A portrait of the terrorists who preceded 9/11 and the world they came from, and the FBI counterterrorism chief who tried to sop Al-Qaeda's threat.

Thomas Cook Travel Book Award

2000
An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan
Elliot, Jason
The authors' account of his trips to Afghanistan: first, in 1979 when he spent time with the mujaheddin fighting the Soviets, and ten years later as the Taliban rose to power.

2004
American Nomads: Travels with Lost Conquistadors, Mountain Men, Cowboys, Indians, Hoboes, Truckers, and Bullriders
Grant, Richard
A British writer travels through the American Southwest, reading about the histories of earlier explorers and nomads and describing his encounters with present day nomads like truckers, hoboes, rodeo cowboys and other wanderers.

Compiled by Mary Chartrain
July 2007

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