Staff Picks
Pick Up a Pulitzer Prize Winner!
I love the Pulitzer Prizes because they celebrate outstanding prose in all its forms. They aren’t limited to only books, like the National Book Awards, or only novels, like the Man Booker Prize. Now in their 101st year, the Pulitzer Prizes recognize outstanding achievements in the fields of journalism (newspaper, magazine, and Internet), music composition, and literature.
The Pulitzer Prize list is particularly helpful for me when I’m looking for great longform journalism (lengthy articles that allow the writer to go further in-depth into their topic). I usually go to websites like Longreads or Longform, but the Pulitzer Prize winners are a shortcut to the best of the best, since you can read the entirety of most articles online for free.
Some of the winners, of course, are the biggest newspapers out there: the Washington Post won the Investigative Reporting category for its coverage of the Alabama Senate race; the New York Times won the Public Service category for its coverage of the #MeToo movement.
However, a few smaller, more local papers also picked up some big wins. The Press-Democrat (of Santa Rosa, California) won the Breaking News Reporting category for its reportage of the wildfires that ravaged the state. The Daily Progress (of Charlottesville, Virginia) won Breaking News Photography for its images of the car that drove into a group of protesters. Reading these articles can make our world a little bigger. See the full list of winners here.
For those of you wanting something a little more hefty, you can pick up the following winners (in the Letters and Music categories) here at the library.
General Nonfiction
Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman Jr
Music
Bonus
Okay, okay. This movie was not, and has never been, a Pulitzer Prize winner. But it was the first place I ever heard about Joseph Pulitzer (the newspaper baron of the New York World, for whom the awards are named) and the Newsboys Strike of 1899. While the historical accuracy of the movie-musical is dubious at best, the story of young, hungry, streetwise underdogs taking on Goliaths like Pulitzer and Hearst will melt the coldest of hearts. (Also, dancing 18-year-old Christian Bale!)