Winners from Prior Years

Finalists:
Richard Powers - Generosity: An Enhancement - Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Achy Obejas - Ruins - Akashic Books

Adult Nonfiction
Winner:
James McManus - Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker - Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Finalists:
Sean B. Carroll - Remarkable Creations: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species - Mariner

Lawrence Rothfield - The Rape of Mesopotamia: Behind the Looting of the Iraq Museum - University of Chicago Press

Leonard Zeskind - Blood & Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream - Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Biography
Winner:
Richard C. Lindberg - The Gambler King of Clark Street: Michael C. McDonald and the Rise of Chicago's Democratic Machine - Southern Illinois University Press

Finalists:
James Ballowe - A Man of Salt and Trees: The Life of Joy Morton - Northern Illinois University Press

Paul Taylor - Orlando M. Poe: Civil War General and Great Lakes Engineer - Kent State University Press

Jane S. Smith - The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants - Penguin Press

Children's fiction
Winner:
Saundra Mitchell - Shadowed Summer - Delacorte Books for Young Readers

Finalist:
Gloria Whelan - Waiting for the Owl's Call - Sleeping Bear Press.

Children's Nonfiction
Winner:
Christine Taylor-Butler - Sacred Mountain: Everest - Lee & Low

Finalist:
Candace Fleming - The Great and Only Barnum: The Tremendous, Stupendous Life of Showman P. T. Barnum - Schwartz & Wade

Poetry
Winner:
Jim Harrison - In Search of Small Gods - Copper Canyon Press

Finalist:
Marc J. Sheehan - Vengeful Hymns - Ashland Poetry Press

James Friend Memorial Award for Literary and Dramatic Criticism
Winner:
Tom Williams (originator of chicagocritic.com)

Distinguished Service Award
Carol Jean Carlson