Have you Heard? Pulitzer Prize Winners Past and Present
Finish your 2023 reading with award-winning fiction and nonfiction.
This is just a sample of the audiobooks in our collection, and you can visit a library location for assistance in finding personalized recommendations.
2020s
The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X by the late Les Payne and Tamara Payne, read by Dion Graham. 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. An epic biography of Malcolm X finally emerges, drawing on hundreds of hours of the author’s interviews, rewriting much of the known narrative. Print / Playaway / eBook.
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, narrated by Charlie Thurston. 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The teenage son of an Appalachian single mother who dies when he is eleven uses his good looks, wit, and instincts to survive foster care, child labor, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Print / Large print / eBook / eAudiobook.
Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America by Marcia Chatelain, read by Machelle Williams. 2021 Pulitzer Prize for History. From civil rights to Ferguson, Franchise reveals the untold history of how fast food became one of the greatest generators of black wealth in America. Print / eAudiobook / eBook.
Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power by Jefferson Cowie, read by Andre Chapoy. 2023 Pulitzer Prize for History. A prize-winning historian chronicles the long-running clash between white people and federal authority by focusing on Barbour County, Alabama and its history of fighting Reconstruction, integration, and the New Deal. Print / eAudiobook.
G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage, read by Gabra Zackman. 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. A major new biography of J Edgar Hoover that draws from never-before-seen sources to create a groundbreaking portrait of a colossus who dominated half a century of American history and planted the seeds for much of today’s conservative political landscape. Print / eAudiobook / eBook.
His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, read by Dion Graham. 2023 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. A landmark biography by two prizewinning Washington Post reporters that reveals how systemic racism shaped George Floyd’s life and legacy–from his family’s roots in the tobacco fields of North Carolina, to ongoing inequality in housing, education, health care, criminal justice, and policing–telling the singular story of how one man’s tragic experience brought about a global movement for change. Print / Large print / eAudiobook / eBook.
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, narrated by JD Jackson. 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. Print / Large print / eAudiobook / eBook.
The Night Watchman written and narrated by Louise Erdrich. 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Based on the extraordinary life of Erdrich’s grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C. Print / Playaway / Large print / eAudiobook / eBook.
Stay True written and read by Hua Hsu. 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography. From the New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, a gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art. Print / Large print / eAudiobook / eBook.
Trust by Hernan Diaz, narrated by Edoardo Ballerini, Jonathan Davis, Mozhan Marno and Orlagh Cassidy. 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit. Print / eAudiobook / eBook.
The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care by Anne Boyer, read by Amy Finegan. 2020 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. When Boyer was diagnosed with highly aggressive triple-negative breast cancer, the illness was both a crisis and an initiation into new ideas about mortality and the gendered politics of illness. Here she explores the experience of illness as mediated by digital screens, weaving in ancient Roman dream diarists, cancer hoaxers and fetishists, cancer vloggers, corporate lies, John Donne, the ecological costs of chemotherapy, and the many little murders of capitalism. Print / eAudiobook.
2010s
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, narrated by Zach Appelman. 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. A blind French girl and a German boy’s paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Print / Large print / CD Book / eAudiobook / eBook / Spanish.
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss, read by Paul Michael. 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. He was only 32 when he was given command of 53,000 men, the reward for series of triumphs that many regarded as impossible, and then topped his previous feats by leading a raid up a frozen cliff face that secured the Alps for France. It was after his subsequent heroic service as Napoleon’s cavalry commander that Dumas was captured and cast into a dungeon, and a harrowing ordeal commenced that inspired one of the world’s classic works of fiction. Print / CD Book / eBook.
Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America by T.J. Stiles, read by Arthur Morey. 2016 Pulitzer Prize for History. Stiles demolishes Custer’s historical caricature, revealing a capable yet insecure man, intelligent yet bigoted, passionate yet self-destructive, a romantic individualist at odds with the institution of the military (court-martialed twice in six years) and the new corporate economy, a wartime emancipator who rejected racial equality. Print / eAudiobook / eBook.
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee, read by Fred Sanders. 2011 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. A magnificently written “biography” of cancer–from its origins to the epic battle to cure, control, and conquer it. Print / Large print / eAudiobook / eBook / Spanish.
Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People by Elizabeth A. Fenn, read by Christine Marshall and Elizabeth A. Fenn. 2015 Pulitzer Prize for History. A riveting account of Mandan history, landscapes, and people, Fenn’s narrative is enriched and enlivened not only by science and research but by her own encounters at the heart of the world. Print / eAudiobook.
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond, read by Dion Graham. 2017 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Harvard sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Print / Large print / eAudiobook / eBook.
The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner, read by Norman Dietz. 2011 Pulitzer Prize for History. In a landmark work of deep scholarship and insight, Foner gives us a life of Lincoln as it intertwined with slavery, the defining issue of the time and the tragic hallmark of American history. The author demonstrates how Lincoln navigated a dynamic political landscape deftly, moving in measured steps, often on a path forged by abolitionists and radicals in his party, and that Lincoln’s greatness lay in his capacity for moral and political growth. Print / eAudiobook.
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight, read by Prentice Onayemi. 2019 Pulitzer Prize for History. The definitive, dramatic biography of the most important African-American of the nineteenth century: Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading abolitionists and writers of the era. Print / eAudiobook / eBook.
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, narrated by David Pittu. 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. A young boy in New York City miraculously survives an accident that takes the life of his mother. In the years that follow, he becomes entranced by one of the few things that reminds him of his mother; a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the art underworld. Print / CD Book / Playaway / eAudiobook / eBook / Korean / Spanish / DVD.
Less by Andrew Sean Greer, narrated by Robert Petkoff. 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Receiving an invitation to his ex-boyfriend’s wedding, Arthur, a failed novelist on the eve of his fiftieth birthday, embarks on an international journey that finds him falling in love, risking his life, reinventing himself, and making connections with the past. Print / Large print / eAudiobook / eBook.
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable, read by G. Valmont Thomas. 2012 Pulitzer Prize for History. Draws on new research to trace the life of Malcolm X from his troubled youth through his involvement in the Nation of Islam, his activism in the world of Black Nationalism, and his assassination. Print / eAudiobook / eBook.
The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson, narrated by Tim Kang, Josiah D. Lee and James Kyson Lee. 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The Orphan master’s son follows a young man’s journey through the icy waters, dark tunnels, and eerie spy chambers of the world’s most mysterious dictatorship, North Korea. Print / CD Book / eAudiobook / eBook.
The Overstory by Richard Powers, narrated by Suzanne Toren. 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. A novel of activism and natural-world power presents interlocking fables about nine remarkable strangers who are summoned in different ways by trees for an ultimate, brutal stand to save the continent’s few remaining acres of virgin forest. Print / eAudiobook / eBook.
The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe by David I. Kertzer, read by Stefan Rudnicki. 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Analyzes the relationship between Pius XI and the notorious Italian dictator, tracing how after coming into power in the same year they forged covert ties to one another to consolidate power and pursue political goals. Print / eAudiobook / eBook.
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser, read by Christina Moore. 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. A comprehensive historical portrait of Laura Ingalls Wilder draws on unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries and official records to fill in the gaps in Wilder’s official story, sharing details about her pioneer experiences. Print / Large print / Playaway / CD Book / eAudiobook / eBook.
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert, read by Anne Twomey. 2015 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Provides a moving account of the disappearances occurring all around us and traces the evolution of extinction as concept, from its first articulation by Georges Cuvier in revolutionary Paris up through the present day. The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind’s most lasting legacy, compelling us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human. Print / eAudiobook / eBook.
The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt, read by Edoardo Ballerini. 2012 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Greenblatt transports listeners to the dawn of the Renaissance and chronicles the life of an intrepid book lover who rescued the Roman philosophical text On the Nature of Things from certain oblivion. Print / CD Book.
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, narrated by Bahni Turpin. 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Print / CD Book / Playaway / eAudiobook / eBook / Chinese / Spanish.
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, narrated by Roxana Ortega. 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs confront their pasts in this powerful story about how rebellion ages, influence corrupts, habits turn to addictions, lifelong friendships fluctuate and turn, and how art and music have the power to redeem. Print / CD Book / eBook / Chinese.
Washington: a Life by Ron Chernow, read by Edward Herrmann. 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. In “Washington : a Life” celebrated biographer Ron Chernow provides a richly nuanced portrait of the father of our nation, dashing forever the stereotype of a stolid, unemotional man, and revealing an astute and surprising portrait of a canny political genius who knew how to inspire people. Print / Large print / CD Book / Playaway / eAudiobook / eBook.
2000s
American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham, read by Richard McGonagle. 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. A thought-provoking study of Andrew Jackson chronicles the life and career of a self-made man who went on to become a military hero and seventh president of the United States, critically analyzing Jackson’s seminal role during a turbulent era in history, the political crises and personal upheaval that surrounded him, and his legacy for the modern presidency. Print / CD Book / eAudiobook / eBook.
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, read by Jeff Cummings. 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. In this magisterial, acclaimed biography twenty-five years in the making, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin capture Oppenheimer’s life and times, from his early career to his central role in the Cold War. This is biography and history at its finest, riveting and deeply informative. Print / eAudiobook / eBook.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, narrated by Jonathan Davis. 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Oscar is an overweight Dominican from the ghetto in New Jersey. He dreams of becoming a writer and finding love, but fuku, the curse has haunted his family for generations. Print / CD Book / eAudiobook / eBook / Spanish.
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, narrated by Tim Jerome. 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. an intimate tale of three generations, from the Civil War to the 20th century: a story about fathers and sons and the spiritual battles that still rage at America’s heart. Print / Large print / eAudiobook / eBook / Chinese.
John Adams by David McCullough, read by Nelson Runger. 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. The adventurous life journey of John Adams, the brilliant, fiercely independent, often irascible, always honest Yankee patriot who spared nothing in his zeal for the American Revolution; who rose to become the second president of the United States and saved the country from blundering into an unnecessary war; who was learned beyond all but a few and regarded by some as “out of his senses”; and whose marriage to the wise and valiant Abigail Adams is one of the moving love stories in American history. Print / Large print / CD Book / eAudiobook.
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright, read by Alan Sklar. 2007 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Explores both the American and Arab sides of the September 11th terrorist attacks in an account of the people, ideas, events, and intelligence failures that led to the attacks. Print / Large print / eAudiobook / eBook / DVD.
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, narrated by Kristoffer Tabori. 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Middlesex tells the breathtaking story of Calliope Stehanides, and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family, who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City, and the race riots of 1967, before they move out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. Print / eAudiobook / eBook.
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, narrated by Kimberly Farr. 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. At the edge of the continent, in the small town of Crosby, Maine, lives Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher who deplores the changes in her town and in the world at large but doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her. Print / eAudiobook / eBook / Chinese / DVD.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy, narrated by Tom Stechschulte. 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. America is a barren landscape of smoldering ashes, devoid of life except for those people still struggling to scratch out some type of existence. Amidst the destruction, a father and his young son walk, always toward the coast, but with no real understanding that circumstances will improve once they arrive. Still they persevere, and their relationship comes to represent goodness in a world that is utterly devastated. Print / Large print / Playaway / eBook.
Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) by Stacy Schiff, read by Anna Fields. 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Vladimir Nabokov–the émigré author of Lolita, Pale Fire, and Speak, Memory–wrote his books first for himself, second for his wife. Set in prewar Europe and postwar America, spanning much of the twentieth century, the story of the Nabokov’s fifty-two-year marriage reads as vividly as a novel. Vera, both beautiful and brilliant, is its outsized heroine–a woman who loves as deeply and intelligently as did the great romantic heroines of Austen and Tolstoy. Print / CD Book.
1990s
Angela’s Ashes: a Memoir written and read by Frank McCourt. 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. A memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Print / Large print / eAudiobook.
Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond, read by Doug Ordunio. 1998 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Jared Diamond, Professor of Physiology at the UCLA School of Medicine, goes beyond weapons, war tactics, and politics to show how biological and environmental factors changed and shaped thousands of years of history. Print / CD Book / eAudiobook / eBook / DVD.
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields, narrated by Deborah Drakeford. 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Born in 1905, Daisy Stone Goodwill drifts through the roles of child, wife, widow, and mother, and finally into her old age. Bewildered by her inability to understand her place in her own life, Daisy attempts to find a way to tell her story within a novel that is itself about the limitations of autobiography. Print / eAudiobook / eBook.
1980s
Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by David J. Garrow, read by Jeff Riggenbach. 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Based on more than 700 interviews with King’s closest surviving associates and with the lawmen who worked against him. eAudiobook.
Beloved written and narrated by Toni Morrison. 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Set in the period after the American Civil War, the novel tells the story of a dysfunctional family of formerly enslaved people whose Cincinnati home is haunted by a malevolent spirit. Print / eAudiobook / eBook / Chinese / Korean.
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, narrated by Barrett Whitener. 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Set in New Orleans with a wild cast of characters including Ignatius and his mother; Miss Trixie, the octogenarian assistant accountant at Levi Pants; inept, wan Patrolman Mancuso; Darlene, the Bourbon Street stripper with a penchant for poultry; and Jones, the jivecat in space-age dark glasses, the novel serves as an outlandish but believable tribute to a city defined by its parade of eccentric denizens. Print / eAudiobook.
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, narrated by Lee Horsley. 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Journey to the dusty little Texas town of Lonesome Dove and meet an unforgettable assortment of heroes and outlaws, whores and ladies, Indians and settlers. Print / eAudiobook / eBook / DVD.
The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes, read by Holter Graham. 1988 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. From the turn-of-the-century discovery of nuclear energy to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan, Richard Rhodes’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book details the science, the people, and the socio-political realities that led to the development of the atomic bomb. Print / eAudiobook / eBook.
Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike, narrated by Arthur Morey. 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The hero of John Updike’s Rabbit, Run, ten years after the hectic events described in Rabbit Redux, has come to enjoy considerable prosperity as Chief Sales Representative of Springer Motors, a Toyota agency in Brewer, Pennsylvania. Print / eAudiobook.
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris, read by Mark Deakins. 1980 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. The story of seven men–a naturalist, a writer, a lover, a hunter, a ranchman, a soldier, and a politician–who merged at the age of 42 to become the youngest President in history. Print / eAudiobook / eBook.
1970s
The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, narrated by Stephen Hoye. 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Details the events around four days in late June and early July 1863, the story follows four men as they march into the field for what will become the bloodiest three days in American history. CD Book / eAudiobook / eBook.
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, read by Tavia Gilbert. 1975 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Annie Dillard takes us through a year of on-foot explorations through her own landscape, bringing anecdotes, curiosities, and insights about all she observes and experiences. Print / eAudiobook / eBook.
Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945 by Barbara W. Tuchman, read by Pam Ward. 1972 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Joseph Stilwell was the military attaché to China in 1935 to 1939, commander of United States forces, and allied chief of staff to Chiang Kai-shek in 1942-44. His story unfolds against the background of China’s history, from the revolution of 1911 to the turmoil of World War II, when China’s Nationalist government faced attack from Japanese invaders and Communist insurgents. CD Book.
1960s
Advise and Consent by Allen Drury, narrated by Allan Robertson. 1960 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The President of the United States nominates the controversial Robert A. Leffingwell to be Secretary of State, and as that startling news reverberates throughout Washington a powerful politician commits suicide, a Congressional Committee comes up with a surprise witness, there is a vote of censure by the Senate, and the cynicism and selfishness and altruism and loyalty and ambitions of America’s public servants are revealed. eAudiobook / eBook.
The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman, read by Wanda McCaddon. 1963 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Incorporating a captivating literary narrative, Barbara Wertheim Tuchman, a self-trained historian, details the events leading up to as well as the first thirty days of World War One. Print / CD Book / eAudiobook / eBook.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, narrated by Sissy Spacek. 1961 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Scout Finch, daughter of the town lawyer Atticus, has just started school; but her carefree days come to an end when a black man in town is accused of raping a white woman, and her father is the only man willing to defend him. Print / Large print / CD Book / eAudiobook / eBook / Spanish eAudiobook / Spanish eBook / Chinese / Spanish / Russian.
1950s
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, narrated by Donald Sutherland. 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Tells the story of an old fisherman’s struggle against natural obstacles that hinder the catch of a huge marlin. Print / CD Book / eBook / Chinese / Spanish / Korean.
1940s
Abraham Lincoln: The War Years by Carl Sandburg, read by Arthur Morey. 1940 Pulitzer Prize for History. Growing up in an Illinois prairie town, Sandburg listened to stories of old-timers who had known Lincoln. By the time this single-volume edition was competed, he had spent a lifetime studying, researching, and writing about our sixteenth president. His extraordinary portrait brings fully to life the country lawyer who would become one of the most influential and beloved presidents of the American republic. Print / Playaway.
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, narrated by Robert Sheehan, Michelle Fairley and Zubin Varla. 1940 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. Novel about the plight of American farmers who were forced off their farms by drought and foreclosure during the 1930’s. Print / CD Book / eAudiobook / eBook.
1930s
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, narrated by Anthony Heald. 1932 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. Tells the poignant tale of a Chinese farmer and his family in old agrarian China. Print / Graphic Novel / CD Book / eBook / Spanish CD Book.
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, narrated by Linda Stephens. 1937 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. Scarlett O’Hara, the beautiful, spoiled daughter of a well-to-do Georgia plantation owner, must use every means at her disposal to claw her way out of the poverty she finds herself in after Sherman’s March to the Sea. Print / eAudiobook / eBook / French / DVD / Blu-ray.
Related Posts
Growing Green Gardens
Plano Learns: Quilting
