Phi Beta Kappa is pleased to announce the winners of our three annual book awards. These $10,000 prizes are given to outstanding works of non-fiction that engage a wide audience with important ideas in science, history, and literature.
The Christian Gauss Award
The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of the Bondwoman’s Narrative
By Gregg Hecimovich
In this remarkable biography, Gregg Hecimovich identifies the author of The Bondwoman’s Narrative as Hannah Bond “Crafts.” She was not only the first known Black woman to compose a novel but also an extraordinarily gifted artist who honed her literary skills in direct opposition to a system designed to deny her every measure of humanity.
The ΦBK Award in Science
Blight: Fungi and the Coming Pandemic
By Emily Monosson
Infectious fungi are the most devastating agents of disease on earth. Tracing the history of fungal spread and the most recent discoveries in the field, Emily Monosson meets scientists who are working tirelessly to protect species under threat, and whose innovative approaches to fungal invasion have the potential to save human lives.
The Ralph Waldo Emerson Award
Time’s Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance
By Jeremy Eichler
With a critic’s ear, a scholar’s erudition, and a novelist’s eye for detail, Jeremy Eichler shows how four towering composers—Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Benjamin Britten—lived through the era of the Second World War and the Holocaust and later transformed their experiences into transcendent works of music, scores that echo lost time.