Unless I’m wrong, pandas at the zoo get more press attention than the winners of the Los Angeles Times Book
Prizes. This
year’s winners were named over the weekend. They included Henry Wiencek in history, for
“An Imperfect
God,” and Ishmael Reed, who received the Robert Kirsch Award for
“Blues City: A Walk
in Oakland.”
Did anyone besides the L.A. Times take notice? The New York Times, The Washington Post,
The Chicago Tribune and U.S.A. Today didn’t. If all politics is local, book politics is localer.
Other winners were Pete Dexter for “Train” (fiction); Neil Smith for “American Empire” (biography); Mark Haddon for
“The Curious Incident of the
Dog in the Night-Time” (first fiction); Anthony Hecht for “Collected Later Poems” (poetry); Ross Terrill
for “The
New Chinese Empire” (current-interest nonfiction); Jennifer Donnelly
for “A Northern
Light” (young adult fiction), and Randy J. Hilts for
“Protecting America’s
Health” (science and technology).
