Skip to main content

Lukas prizes honor books on homelessness, the US Census and ancient India

NEW YORK (AP) — Books on homelessness, the U.S. Census and ancient India are among this year’s winners of prizes handed out by the J. Anthony Lukas Project, named for the late author and investigative journalist.

The winners were announced Tuesday by the project’s administrators, the Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

Jeff Hobbs’ “Seeking Shelter: A Working Mother, Her Children, and a Story of Homelessness in America” won the Lukas Book Prize, a $10,000 honor given for exemplifying “literary grace, commitment to serious research and social concern.” The Mark Lynton Prize for history, a $10,000 award for combining “literary grace, commitment to serious research and social concern,” was given to William Dalrymple’s “The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World.”

The Lukas Work-in-Progress Awards, for which each winner receives $25,000, went to danah boyd, for “Data Are Made, Not Found: A Story of Politics, Power, and the Civil Servants Who Saved the U.S. Census” and Karim Zidan for “In the Shadow of the Cage.”

The Lukas prizes were established in 1998. Previous winners include Robert Caro,Isabel Wilkerson and Jill Lepore.

Dutch court allows rapper Ye concerts in the Netherlands

AMSTERDAM (AP) — A judge in Amsterdam on Wednesday rejected an appeal by a Jewish organization to block two performances by the rapper Ye, formerly Kanye West, ruling that the concerts are not a threat to public order. Ye has drawn widespread controversy in recent years for a series of antisemitic remarks, leaving Dutch authorities under mounting pressure to cancel the gigs on June 6 and 8. The Central Jewish Council filed the emergency lawsuit on Tuesday, arguing that Ye should be banned from the country for voicing admiration for Adolf Hilter and selling T-shirts featuring swastikas. According to the Amsterdam District Court, there were no grounds to bar Ye from performing. “There are no indications that West’s presence in the coming days will lead to concrete public order dangers,” the court said in a statement.
Read Next Story