NEWS: 2006 Pulitzer Prize Winners Announced

CULTURE: 2006 Pulitzer Prize Winners Announced

Most people accept Academy Awards in the shower. Maybe they help themselves to a Golden Globe or Grammy, here and there. Me? What honor do I bestow upon myself whilst washing the soap from my eyes? Why, the ever-so-sexy Pulitzer Prize. Today the 2006 winners were announced, and for the first time since 1997, no prize was awarded for drama.

Geraldine Brooks won the prize for fiction with her novel March, which imagines the life of John March (father of the four girls in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women).

David M. Oshinsky won the history prize for his book Polio: An American Story, which is described as "a remarkable portrait of America in the early 1950s, using the widespread panic over polio to shed light on our national obsessions and fears."

The prize for general nonfiction went to Caroline Elkins, whose book Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya, details recent, violent British treatment of the Kikuyu people.

A special citation was posthumously awarded to Thelonious Monk for "a body of distinguished and innovative musical composition that has had a significant and enduring impact on the evolution of jazz."

For the complete list of winners, including the many prizes for journalism, visit Pulitzer.org. As for me—I’ll be in the shower.

Weird that two of the best fiction books this year were "March" by Brooks, and "The March" by Doctorow.