2011 Helen Bernstein Book Award Finalists Revealed

By Jason Boog 

Five books were chosen as finalists for the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism award this year–chosen from 75 different nominated nonfiction books.

We’ve listed the five nominees below, complete with links to the New York Public Library entries for each book.

Here’s more about the award: “The Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism was established by the Bernstein family in 1988, by a gift to the New York Public Library in Helen Bernstein Fealy’s name.  The gift was in two parts and the idea was to focus on Helen’s love and appreciation of the crucial role that journalism and newspapers play in our society by establishing the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism and endowing the position Helen Bernstein Librarian for Periodicals & Journals.”

The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line between Christianity and Islam by Eliza Griswold (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

The Watchers; The Rise of America’s Surveillance State by Shane Harris (The Penguin Press)

Everything is Broken: A Tale of Catastrophe in Burma by Emma Larkin (The Penguin Press)

All the Devils Are Here: the Hidden History of the Financial Crisis by Bethany McLean & Joe Nocera (Portfolio / Penguin Group – USA)

The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption and the Control of our Food Supply by Marie-Monique Robin; translated by George Holoch (The New Press)