Masha Gessen Wins 2018 Helen Bernstein Book Award For Excellence In Journalism

May 22, 2018  - Masha Gessen has won The New York Public Library’s 2018 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism for her illuminating work, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. The winner was announced last night at the 31st annual Bernstein Awards ceremony, held at the Library's iconic Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.

In addition to The Future Is History, which has also won the National Book Award, Gessen has authored The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin and several other books. A staff writer at the New Yorker and the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Carnegie Fellowship, Gessen teaches at Amherst College, and lives in New York City.

The Future Is History captures a pivotal era through the stories of several Russians whose lives spanned three decades in which Russia, having seemingly shed its Soviet incarnation for good and embarked on a journey toward democracy, devolved into a frightening retro-totalitarian state run by Putin with an iron fist. By giving us the arc of these individual lives, Gessen pushes past the abstractions and headlines, providing a revelatory, in-depth perspective on daily life under a regime that has turned on its own people.

“It is gratifying to have my book recognized specifically as a work of journalism - and it is a great honor to be recognized by a group of journalists whose work I admire greatly,” said Gessen. “I am in awe of the other finalists.”

Gessen was one of five finalists for the Bernstein Award selected by a seven-member Library Review Committee, which received and read nearly 100 nominations from publishers. The winner was chosen by a separate Bernstein Selection Committee, chaired by journalist and editor James Hoge. The other finalists were:

  • Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder (W.W. Norton & Company)

  • The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan (W.W. Norton & Company)

  • Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency by Joshua Green (Penguin)

  • Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street by Sheelah Kolhatkar (Random House)

Previous winners of the award, which comes with a $15,000 cash prize, include such acclaimed journalists as Katherine Boo, Dan Fagin, David Finkel, Anand Giridharadas, George Packer, and Ellen Schultz. In 2017, Jane Mayer won for her work, Dark Money, which details the history of an elite cadre of plutocrats who have bankrolled a systematic plan to fundamentally alter the American political 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 (now Helen Bernstein Fealy). The gift was in two parts and also endows the position of the Helen Bernstein Librarian for Periodicals & Journals. This position curates The New York Public Library’s internationally-renowned Periodicals Division, housing one of the largest collections of past and present newspapers, magazines, and journals from around the world. The position is currently held by Librarian Shannon Keller.

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