Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library Reader Advisory Blog: 2015 Pulitzer Prize Winners Announced

The 2015 Pulitzer Prize Winners were announced on Monday, April 20, 2015 at Columbia University in NYC. The book winners in the fiction, history, biography and general nonfiction categories are listed below - congrats to all!

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Encounters at the Heart of the World by Elizabeth Fenn

The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert

Category: Fiction

Title/Author: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Summary: "This is a beautiful book. Two children, a book-loving blind girl from Paris and a gifted orphan boy from Germany, move in alternate chapters through the 1930s into World War II." - Voices of Youth Advocates Reviews

Category: History

Title/Author: Encounters at the Heart of the World : a History of the Mandan People by Elizabeth A. Fenn

Summary: "Anyone who has seen the sensitive portraits of Mandan chiefs painted in the 1830s by George Catlin and Karl Bodmer will be captivated by Fenn's exhaustively researched history of the tribe that once thrived on the upper Missouri River in present-day North Dakota—at one time the center of northern Plains commerce." - Booklist Reviews

Category: Biography

Title/Author: The Pope and Mussolini: the secret history of Pius XI and the rise of Fascism in Europe by David I. Kertzer

Summary: "Two leaders came to power in 1922 in Rome, Achille Ratti was elevated to the papacy as Pius XI, and Benito Mussolini was appointed Italian prime minister. How relations between them developed until the pope's 1939 demise occupies this original history, which rests on Kertzer's thorough research of available Vatican archives and other sources." - Booklist Reviews

Category: General Nonfiction

Title/Author: The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

Summary: "Few writers engage readers in thinking about the meaning of scientific discoveries as well as Elizabeth Kolbert, a staff writer at The New Yorker. Kolbert’s enviable talents, her wit and intelligence, the clarity of her prose, are on full display in The Sixth Extinction, a fascinating and alarming book that examines mass extinctions of life forms, past and present." - BookPage Reviews

Click here for more information on current and past Pulitzer Prize winners, as well as nominated finalists.

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

Genre: Adult Non-Fiction
Rating: 5 out of 5

"Being Mortal is about the limitations of what modern medicine can provide for people as their lives draw to a close. Gawande argues that the objective of medicine should not merely be treatment and survival; medical care should also ensure dignity in death and having control over one's final moments. He argues that instead of aggressively fighting the inescapable realities of aging, we should ask the hard questions of ourselves and our loved ones -- What makes life worth living? When should we try to extend our lives, and when should we choose a better quality of our remaining days over extending their quantity?

This book is difficult to read. Not because of the way Gawande writes -- his style is highly engaging, and he never lapses into excessively scientific jargon or overly simplistic explanations -- but because of the tough subject matter. Gawande draws on his own experiences as a doctor and peppers his book with honest and humane stories of his patients, friends, and family; the stories he tells make the book more accessible, and also more heartbreaking. (And that's not a bad thing.)

No one likes to think about their loved ones', or their own, impending mortality. But it's important to have these hard conversations, because as Gawande says, "endings matter." - Amanda

2015 Pulitzer Prize Winners Announced

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