Some Favorite Pulitzer Prize Winners

In the last few months, I’ve gotten very into collecting bookmarks, I think because they can be both beautiful and useful. I particularly loved this resin bookmark – how luxurious does that

This 2018 winner is about the origins of the “war on crime” in the 1970s, specifically why this movement was supported by many African American leaders at the time. He explores that era’s surge of crime and drug addiction, and how Black leaders felt that gains of the civil rights movement were being undermined by those crimes. Few anticipated how those decisions would lead directly to the mass incarceration problems we see today. 

This winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize is an incredible book. Matthew Desmond is a Princeton sociologist who sought to understand housing insecurity in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In the book, he follows eight families trying to keep a roof over their heads, showing how precarious life can often be. It’s a deeply upsetting and eye-opening book absolutely worth picking up. 

Siddhartha Mukherjee is a physician, researcher, and science writer, who uses his considerable talents to tell a story about cancer. This expansive book explores cancer through the lenses of biology, history, and biography. The stories Mukherjee shares about the cancer patients he treats are deeply moving and balanced out with stories about the scientists trying to eradicate this disease. Even though it won the 2011 prize, I know a 608-page book about the history of cancer might seem daunting. But Mukherjee’s gift for storytelling and illustrating complicated science makes it well worth the effort.