Biography (Two winners!)
Winners
King: A Life, by Jonathan Eig (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Quotation: A revelatory portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. that attracts on new sources to complement our understanding of every stage of the civil rights chief’s life, exploring his strengths and weaknesses, together with the self-questioning and melancholy that accompanied his willpower.
Grasp Slave Husband Spouse: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom, by Ilyon Woo (Simon & Schuster)
Quotation: “A wealthy narrative of the Crafts, an enslaved couple who escaped from Georgia in 1848, with light-skinned Ellen disguised as a disabled white gentleman and William as her manservant, exploiting assumptions about race, class and incapacity to cover in public on their journey to the North, the place they grew to become well-known abolitionists whereas evading bounty hunters.”
Finalist
Larry McMurtry: A Life, by Tracy Daugherty (St. Martin’s Press)