The 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were presented on Friday, April 19, 2013, in a public ceremony in the Bovard Auditorium on the campus of USC.

For more information, please visit: www.latimesbookprizes.com.

2012 Winners

Innovator's Award
Margaret Atwood

Kirsch Award
Kevin Starr

Biography
Robert Caro / The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Knopf)

Current Interest
Katherine Boo / Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (Random House)

Fiction
Ben Fountain / Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (HarperCollins Publishers / Ecco)

Graphic Novel/Comics
Sammy Harkham / Everything Together: Collected Stories (PictureBox)

History
Fergus M. Bordewich / America’s Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union (Simon & Schuster)

Mystery/Thriller
Tana French / Broken Harbor (Viking)

Poetry
Louise Glück / Poems 1962-2012 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Science & Technology
Florence Williams / Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History (W.W. Norton & Company)

Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
Maggie Shipstead / Seating Arrangements (Knopf)

Young Adult Literature
A.S. King / Ask the Passengers (Little, Brown Books For Young Readers)
 

2012 Finalists

Innovator's Award
Margaret Atwood

Kirsch Award
Kevin Starr

Biography
H.W. Brands / The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace (Doubleday)
Robert Caro / The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Knopf)
Alice Kessler-Harris / A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman (Bloomsbury Press)
David Nasaw / The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy (Penguin Press)
R.J. Smith / The One: The Life and Music of James Brown (Gotham Books)

Current Interest
Katherine Boo / Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (Random House)
Steve Coll / Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power (Penguin Press)
Karen Elliott House / On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines – and Future (Knopf)
Jim Sterba / Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds (Crown)
Jake Tapper / The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor (Little, Brown and Company)

Fiction
Jami Attenberg / The Middlesteins: A Novel (Grand Central Publishing)
Michael Chabon / Telegraph Avenue (HarperCollins Publishers / Harper)
Ben Fountain / Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (HarperCollins Publishers / Ecco)
Lauren Groff / Arcadia (Voice/Hyperion)
Lydia Millet / Magnificence (W.W. Norton & Company)

Graphic Novel/Comics
Alison Bechdel / Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Leela Corman / Unterzakhn (Schocken)
Sammy Harkham / Everything Together: Collected Stories (PictureBox)
Spain Rodriguez / Cruisin’ With the Hound: The Life and Times of Fred Toote (Fantagraphics)
Chris Ware / Building Stories (Pantheon)

History
John Barry / Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty (Viking)
George Black / Empire of Shadows: The Epic Story of Yellowstone (St. Martin’s Press)
Fergus M. Bordewich / America’s Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union (Simon & Schuster)
Amy S. Greenberg / A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico (Knopf)
Geoffrey Kabaservice / Rule & Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party from Eisenhower to the Tea Party (Oxford University Press)

Mystery/Thriller
Tana French / Broken Harbor (Viking)
Nick Harkaway / Angelmaker (Knopf)
Fuminori Nakamura / The Thief (Soho Crime)
Chris Pavone / The Expats (Crown)
Ariel S. Winter / The Twenty-Year Death (Hard Case Crime)

Poetry
Louise Glück / Poems 1962-2012 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Rowan Ricardo Phillips / The Ground: Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
D. A. Powell / Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys: Poems (Graywolf Press)
Bin Ramke / Aerial (Omnidawn)
Cole Swensen / Gravesend (New California Poetry) (University of California Press)

Science & Technology
Susan Cain / Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking (Crown)
George Dyson / Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe (Pantheon)
Jonathan Gottschall / The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Nate Silver / The Signal and the Noise: Why so Many Predictions Fail — But Some Don’t (Penguin Press)
Florence Williams / Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History (W.W. Norton & Company)

Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
David Abrams / Fobbit (Black Cat/Grove/Atlantic, Inc.)
Kevin P. Keating / The Natural Order of Things (Aqueous Books)
Lydia Netzer / Shine Shine Shine (St. Martin’s Press)
Maggie Shipstead / Seating Arrangements (Knopf)
Robin Sloan / Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Book Store: A Novel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Young Adult Literature
Paolo Bacigalupi / The Drowned Cities (Little, Brown Books For Young Readers)
A.S. King / Ask the Passengers (Little, Brown Books For Young Readers)
Martine Leavitt / My Book of Life by Angel (Margaret Ferguson Books/Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers)
Matthew Quick / Boy 21 (Little, Brown Books For Young Readers)
Elizabeth Wein / Code Name Verity (Disney-Hyperion)