Wednesday, March 06, 2019

Non-fiction book award finalists have rural angles on the opioid epidemic, hydraulic fracturing and for-profit prisons

Three of the five finalists for the 2019 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism have significant rural resonance. The prize, established in 1988, is awarded by the New York Public Library for journalists "whose work brings clarity and public attention to important issues, events, or policies," Gwen Glazer writes for the NYPL. The winner, who receives a $15,000 cash prize, will be announced on April 16.

In American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment (Penguin Press), award-winning investigative journalist Shane Bauer offers a "blistering indictment of the private prison system, and the powerful forces that drive it," Glazer writes. Bauer details the history and politics of for-profit prisons, punctuated with anecdotes from his four-month stint as a private prison guard.

Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) tells the story of how a natural-gas boom driven by hydraulic fracturing affected a small Appalachian town. Award-winning poet and journalist Eliza Griswold draws on seven years of immersive reporting to bring the story to life.

Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America (Little, Brown and Co.), by former Roanoke Times reporter Beth Macy, is a comprehensive history of the opioid epidemic in America over the past 20 years that provides "an unforgettable portrait of the families and first responders on the front lines," Glazer writes.

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