The Bernstein 2020 Shortlist: Meet the Finalists for NYPL's Journalism Award
Each year the Library shortlists five books for the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. Started in 1988, the award honors a journalist whose work brings clarity and public attention to important issues, events, or policies.
This year’s finalists are:
Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration
Emily Bazelon
Random House
Charged follows the story of two people caught up in the criminal justice system: Kevin, a twenty-year-old in Brooklyn who picked up his friend’s gun as the cops burst in and was charged with a serious violent felony, and Noura, a teenage girl in Memphis indicted for the murder of her mother. Bazelon tracks both cases closely and illustrates just how criminal prosecutions can go wrong—and, more important, why they don’t have to. By highlighting a wave of new, reform-minded D.A.s who have been elected to do nothing less than reinvent how their job is done, Bazelon ultimately shows how the criminal justice system can begin working toward a different and profoundly better future.
A Good Provider is One Who Leaves: One family and Migration in the 21st Century
Jason DeParle
Viking
When Jason DeParle moved into the Manila slums with Tita Comodas and her family three decades ago, he never imagined his reporting on them would span three generations and turn into the defining chronicle of a new age—the age of global migration. In a monumental book that gives new meaning to "immersion journalism," DeParle paints an intimate portrait of an unforgettable family as they endure years of sacrifice and separation, willing themselves out of shantytown poverty into a new global middle class. At the heart of the story is Tita's daughter, Rosalie. Beating the odds, she struggles through nursing school and works her way across the Middle East until a Texas hospital fulfills her dreams with a job offer in the States.
She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement
Jodi Kantor & Megan Twohey
Penguin Press
In 2017, when Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey began their investigation into Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s treatment of women for The New York Times, powerful men were rarely held accountable for sexual harassment. Victims were often afraid to speak out, or were silenced or dismissed when they did. Even when women reported wrongdoing, predators often continued to ever-higher levels of success, and corporations rarely faced repercussions aside from financial liability. During months of confidential interviews with top actresses, former Weinstein employees, and other sources, Kantor and Twohey unearthed many disturbing and long-buried allegations and wrote the New York Times article that helped break the dam wall and prompt women all around the world to go public with their own stories. But their article, read by millions, was only the beginning. SHE SAID: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story that Helped Ignite a Movement, draws on remarkable new reporting to tell the full story of their investigation and those who tried to stop it.
No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us
Rachel Louise Snyder
Bloomsbury USA
In No Visible Bruises, journalist Rachel Louise Snyder gives context for what we don’t know we’re seeing. She frames this urgent and immersive account of the scale of domestic violence in our country around key stories that explode the common myths—that if things were bad enough, victims would just leave; that a violent person cannot become nonviolent; that shelter is an adequate response; and most insidiously that violence inside the home is a private matter, sealed from the public sphere and disconnected from other forms of violence. Through the stories of victims, perpetrators, law enforcement, and reform movements from across the country, Snyder explores the real roots of private violence, its far-reaching consequences for society, and what it will take to truly address it.
The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier
Ian Urbina
A. A. Knopf
There are few remaining frontiers on our planet. But perhaps the wildest, and least understood, are the world's oceans: too big to police, and under no clear international authority, these immense regions of treacherous water play host to rampant criminality and exploitation. Traffickers and smugglers, pirates and mercenaries, wreck thieves and repo men, vigilante conservationists and elusive poachers, seabound abortion providers, clandestine oil-dumpers, shackled slaves and cast-adrift stowaways—drawing on five years of perilous and intrepid reporting, often hundreds of miles from shore, Ian Urbina introduces us to the inhabitants of this hidden world. Through their stories of astonishing courage and brutality, survival and tragedy, he uncovers a globe-spanning network of crime and exploitation that emanates from the fishing, oil and shipping industries, and on which the world's economies rely.
--
The winner will be announced on April 28, 2020.
A committee of eleven librarians reads dozens of books, all published in 2019, and meets throughout the year to select five finalists. Those choices move on to the seven-member committee of journalists, who choose a winner. Their decision will be announced at a reception at the Library's iconic Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.
Previous winners of the award, which includes a $15,000 cash prize, include such acclaimed journalists as Jane Mayer, George Packer, Ellen Schultz, David Finkel, Katherine Boo, Dan Fagin, and Anand Giridharadas. In 2019, Shane Bauer won for his work, American Prison, a daring book about his time as an entry-level guard at the Winn Correctional Center in Louisiana, and an expose of America’s for-profit prison system.
The Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism was established in 1987 through a gift from Joseph Frank Bernstein, in honor of journalist Helen Bernstein Fealy.
---
Book descriptions provided by the publishers.
Have trouble reading standard print? Many of these titles are available in formats for patrons with print disabilities.
Read E-Books with SimplyE
With your library card, it's easier than ever to choose from more than 300,000 e-books on SimplyE, The New York Public Library's free e-reader app. Gain access to digital resources for all ages, including e-books, audiobooks, databases, and more.
If you don’t have an NYPL library card, New York State residents can apply for a digital card online or through SimplyE (available on the App Store or Google Play).
Need more help? Read our guide to using SimplyE.