The Award Tally
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Anisfield-Wolf Book Award

Cleveland Foundation

An annual American literary prize recognizing books that have made important contributions to our understanding of racism and human diversity, awarded across categories including nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and lifetime achievement.

Search through 1,818 books

2026

  1. Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City

    Bench Ansfield

    Won

2025

  1. The United States Governed By Six Hundred Thousand Despots: A True Story of Slavery

    Jonathan D. S. Schroeder

    Won

2024

  1. The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History

    Ned Blackhawk

    Won

2023

  1. Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad

    Matthew F. Delmont

    Won

2022

  1. All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake

    Tiya Miles

    Won
  2. Of Fear and Strangers: A History of Xenophobia

    George Makari

    Won

2021

  1. Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir

    Natasha Trethewey

    Won
  2. Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War

    Vincent Brown

    Won

2020

  1. Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century

    Charles King

    Won

2019

  1. The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War

    Andrew Delbanco

    Won

2018

  1. Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News

    Kevin Young

    Won

2017

  1. Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race

    Margot Lee Shetterly

    Won

2016

  1. The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle

    Lillian Faderman

    Won
  2. What the Eye Hears: A History of Tap Dancing

    Brian Seibert

    Won

2015

  1. A Tale of Two Plantations: Slave Life and Labor in Virginia and Jamaica

    Richard S. Dunn

    Won

2014

  1. My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

    Ari Shavit

    Won

2013

  1. Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity

    Andrew Solomon

    Won

2012

  1. American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era

    David Blight

    Won
  2. Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others

    David Livingstone Smith

    Won

2011

  1. Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade

    David Eltis and David Richardson

    Won
  2. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

    Isabel Wilkerson

    Won

2009

  1. The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

    Annette Gordon-Reed

    Won

2008

  1. Infidel: My Life

    Ayaan Hirsi Ali

    Won

2007

  1. Steel Drivin' Man: John Henry: The Untold Story of an American Legend

    Scott Reynolds Nelson

    Won

2006

  1. New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan

    Jill Lepore

    Won

2005

  1. Macnolia: Poems

    A. Van Jordan

    Won
  2. Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson

    Geoffrey C. Ward

    Won

2004

  1. Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves

    Ira Berlin

    Won
  2. Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx

    Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

    Won

2003

  1. A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide

    Samantha Power

    Won

2002

  1. Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones

    Quincy Jones

    Won
  2. Vernon Can Read!: A Memoir

    Vernon E. Jordan Jr. and Annette Gordon-Reed

    Won

2001

  1. Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner

    F. X. Toole

    Won
  2. W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963

    David Levering Lewis

    Won

2000

  1. Out of Place: A Memoir

    Edward W. Said

    Won

1999

  1. Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (about the American Civil Rights Movement)

    John Lewis and Michael D'Orso

    Won

1998

  1. The Black Notebooks: An Interior Journey

    Toi Derricotte

    Won

1997

  1. The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother

    James McBride

    Won

1996

  1. Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation

    Jonathan Kozol

    Won

1995

  1. Parallel Time: Growing Up in Black and White

    Brent Staples

    Won
  2. The Science and Politics of Racial Research

    William H. Tucker

    Won

1994

  1. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America

    Ronald Takaki

    Won
  2. W. E. B. Du Bois: A Reader

    David Levering Lewis

    Won

1993

  1. In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture

    Kwame Anthony Appiah

    Won
  2. The Civilization of the Goddess

    Marija Alseikaite Gimbutas

    Won

1992

  1. Lessons and Legacies I: The Meaning of the Holocaust in a Changing World

    Peter Hayes

    Won
  2. Praying for Sheetrock: A Work of Nonfiction

    Melissa Fay Greene

    Won
  3. The Homeplace

    Marilyn Nelson

    Won
  4. The IQ Mythology: Class, Race, Gender, and Inequality

    Elaine Mensh and Harry Mensh

    Won

1991

  1. African Ark: People and Ancient Cultures of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa

    Carol Beckwith, Angela Fisher, and Graham Hancock

    Won
  2. Gunnar Myrdal and America's Conscience: Social Engineering and Racial Liberalism, 1938–1987

    Walter A. Jackson

    Won
  3. The Arrogance Of Faith: Christianity and Race in America

    Forrest G. Wood

    Won

1990

  1. The Image of the Black in Western Art: Part 1

    Hugh Honour

    Won

1989

  1. A Life In The Struggle: Ivory Perry and the Culture of Opposition

    George Lipsitz

    Won
  2. Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia

    Peter Sutton

    Won
  3. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years

    Taylor Branch

    Won
  4. The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers

    Henry Louis Gates Jr.

    Won

1988

  1. Living Maya

    Jeffrey Jay Foxx and Walter F. Morris Jr.

    Won
  2. Whose Votes Count?: Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights

    Abigail M. Thernstrom

    Won

1987

  1. Spirit of Survival

    Gail Sheehy

    Won
  2. The Life of Langston Hughes

    Arnold Rampersad

    Won

1986

  1. Freedom Rising

    James North

    Won
  2. Kachinas: A Hopi Artist's Documentary

    Barton Wright and Clifford Bahnimptewa

    Won
  3. Nazis in Skokie: Freedom, Community and the First Amendment

    Donald Alexander Downs

    Won

1985

  1. The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941–1945

    David S. Wyman

    Won

1984

  1. From Immigrants to Ethnics: The Italian Americans

    Humbert S. Nelli

    Won
  2. Pre-Columbian Art

    Jose Alcina Franch

    Won

1983

  1. Aké: The Years of Childhood

    Wole Soyinka

    Won
  2. Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez

    Richard Rodriguez

    Won

1982

  1. Evangelist of Race: The Germanic Vision of Houston Stewart Chamberlain

    Geoffrey G. Field

    Won

  2. People of the Sacred Mountain

    Peter J. Powell

    Won

1981

  1. Maasai

    Carol Beckwith and Tepilit Ole Saitoti

    Won
  2. Song from the Earth: American Indian painting

    Jamake Highwater

    Won

1980

  1. The !Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society

    Richard Borshay Lee

    Won
  2. The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design

    Urie Bronfenbrenner

    Won

1979

  1. The Bushmen: San Hunters and Herders of Southern Africa

    Phillip V. Tobias

    Won

1978

  1. The Legacy of Malthus: The Social Costs of the New Scientific Racism

    Allan Chase

    Won
  2. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs Of A Girlhood Among Ghosts

    Maxine Hong Kingston

    Won

1977

  1. Simple Justice: A History of Brown v. Board of Education & Black America's Struggle for Equality

    Richard Kluger

    Won
  2. Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America's Concentration Camps

    Michi Weglyn

    Won

1976

  1. The Arabs: Their History, Aims, and Challenge to the Industrialized World

    Thomas Kiernan

    Won
  2. The Myth of the Jewish Race

    Raphael Patai and Jennifer P. Wing

    Won
  3. The War Against the Jews: 1933–1945

    Lucy S. Dawidowicz

    Won

1975

  1. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made

    Eugene D. Genovese

    Won

  2. The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalistic Ideas In Europe

    Leon Poliakov

    Won

1974

  1. Doctor and the Aborigines

    Charles Duguid

    Won
  2. Justice in South Africa

    Albie Sachs

    Won
  3. The Dreyfus Case: A Documentary History

    Louis Leo Snyder

    Won
  4. The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright

    Michel Fabre

    Won

1973

  1. Behind Ghetto Walls: Black Family Life in a Federal Slum

    Lee Rainwater

    Won

  2. Men & Brothers

    Betty Fladeland

    Won
  3. The Water Is Wide

    Pat Conroy

    Won

1972

  1. Outcasts from Evolution: Scientific Attitudes of Racial Inferiority, 1859–1900

    John S. Haller

    Won
  2. Slavery in the Structure of American Politics, 1765–1820

    Donald L. Robinson

    Won

  3. The Autobiography of an Unknown South African

    Naboth Mokgatle

    Won
  4. The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817

    George M. Fredrickson

    Won
  5. The Healing of a Nation

    David Loye

    Won

1971

  1. A History of the African People

    Robert William July

    Won
  2. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 through the Civil War

    Carleton Mabee

    Won
  3. La Raza: The Mexican Americans

    Stan Steiner

    Won
  4. The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca

    Anthony Wallace

    Won

1970

  1. Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto

    Vine Deloria

    Won
  2. Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South

    Dan T. Carter

    Won
  3. The Great Betrayal: The Evacuation of the Japanese-Americans during World War II

    Audrie Girdner and Anne Loftis

    Won
  4. The Negro in Brazilian Society

    Florestan Fernandes

    Won

1969

  1. Negro and White Children: A Psychological Study in the Rural South

    E. Earl Baughman and W. Grant Dahlstrom

    Won

  2. The American Indian Today

    Stuart Levine and Nancy O. Lurie

    Won
  3. The Leo Frank Case

    Leonard Dinnerstein

    Won

1968

  1. Children of Crisis: A Study of Courage and Fear

    Robert Coles

    Won
  2. The Destruction of the European Jews

    Raul Hilberg

    Won
  3. The Jews among the Nations

    Erich Kahler

    Won

  4. Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion

    Norman Rufus Colin Cohn

    Won

1967

  1. La Vida

    Oscar Lewis

    Won
  2. The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture

    David Brion Davis

    Won

1966

  1. Manchild in the Promised Land

    Claude Brown

    Won
  2. The Autobiography of Malcolm X

    Malcolm X and Alex Haley

    Won
  3. The Unity of Mankind in Greek Thought

    H. C. Baldry

    Won
  4. Your Heredity and Environment

    Amram Scheinfeld

    Won

1965

  1. A History of the Jews, Revised Edition

    Abram L. Sachar

    Won
  2. Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion and National Origins

    Milton M. Gordon

    Won
  3. Mississippi: The Closed Society

    James W. Silver

    Won
  4. The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction

    James M. McPherson

    Won

1964

  1. Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City

    Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan

    Won

  2. Faith and Prejudice

    Bernard E. Olson

    Won
  3. The New World of Negro Americans

    Harold R. Isaacs

    Won

1963

  1. Mankind Evolving

    Theodosius Dobzhansky

    Won

1962

  1. Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America

    Dwight L. Dumond

    Won
  2. Black Like Me

    John Howard Griffin

    Won

1961

  1. The Reluctant African

    Louis E. Lomax

    Won
  2. To Sir, With Love

    E. R. Braithwaite

    Won

1960

  1. I Speak for Myself

    John Haynes Holmes

    Won
  2. The Lost Cities of Africa

    Basil Davidson

    Won

1959

  1. Racial and Cultural Minorities: An Analysis of Prejudice and Discrimination

    George Eaton Simpson and J. Milton Yinger

    Won
  2. Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story

    Martin Luther King Jr.

    Won

1958

  1. Handbook on Race Relations

    South African Institute of Race Relations

    Won
  2. White Mother

    Jessie B. Sams

    Won

1957

  1. Naught for Your Comfort

    Father Trevor Huddleston

    Won

  2. The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization

    Gilberto Freyre

    Won

1956

  1. A Manual of Intergroup Relations

    John P. Dean and Alex Rosen

    Won
  2. They Wait in Darkness

    George W. Shepherd

    Won

1955

  1. Cultural Differences and Medical Care

    Lyle Saunders

    Won
  2. Report on Africa

    Oden Meeker

    Won

1954

  1. Struggle for Africa

    Vernon Bartlett

    Won

1953

  1. A Many-Splendoured Thing

    Han Suyin

    Won
  2. People of the Deer

    Farley Mowat

    Won

1952

  1. Race Relations

    Brewton Berry

    Won
  2. Venture to the Interior

    Laurens Van Der Post

    Won

1951

  1. Twilight in South Africa

    Henry Gibbs

    Won

1950

  1. Punishment Without Crime

    S. Andhil Fineberg

    Won

  2. Your Most Humble Servant

    Shirley Graham

    Won

1949

  1. Anatomy of Paradise

    J.C. Furnas

    Won

1948

  1. The Indians of the Americas

    John Collier

    Won

1947

  1. Latin Americans in Texas

    Pauline R. Kibbe

    Won

1946

  1. Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City

    St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton

    Won
  2. One Nation

    Wallace Stegner and the editors of Look

    Won

1945

  1. An American Dilemma

    Gunnar Myrdal

    Won

1944

  1. New World A-Coming

    Roi Ottley

    Won
  2. The World of Sholom Aleichem

    Maurice Samuel

    Won

1943

  1. Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography

    Zora Neale Hurston

    Won

1942

  1. Quest: An Autobiography

    Leopold Infeld

    Won
  2. The Haitian People

    James G. Leyburn

    Won

1941

  1. From Many Lands

    Louis Adamic

    Won

1940

  1. The Negro Family in the United States

    Edward Franklin Frazier

    Won

1939

  1. An Analysis of the Political, Economic and Social Status of the Non-European Peoples in South Africa

    Ralph J. Bunche

    Won
  2. The Negro College Graduate

    Charles S. Johnson

    Won

1937

  1. We Europeans: A Survey of "Racial" Problems

    Julian Huxley and A. C. Haddon

    Won

1936

  1. Negro Politicians: Rise of Negro Politics in Chicago

    Harold Foote Gosnell

    Won