The Washington Monthly proudly announces the finalists of the 2025 Kukula Award for Excellence in Nonfiction Book Reviewing—the only journalism prize dedicated to highlighting and encouraging reviews of serious, public affairs-focused books. Now in its sixth year, the award honors the memory of Kukula Kapoor Glastris, the magazine’s longtime and beloved books editor. Two top prize winners will be announced on Wednesday, August 20.
Selected from 70 outstanding submissions published across a range of print and digital media outlets in 2024, the finalists were honored for their clear and artful exposition; original and persuasive thesis; and ability to enlighten readers with new and valuable information. This year’s judges—veteran journalists, editors, and authors—gave priority to works of public affairs and policy, politics, history, and biography.
Finalists were chosen in two categories based on size of the publication. In the larger category, finalists are:
- Ian Johnson in the The New York Review of Books, for his review of I Have No Enemies: The Life and Legacy of Liu Xiaobo, by Perry Link and Wu Dazhi
- Dan Kois in Slate, for his review of The Great Wave: The Era of Radical Disruption and the Rise of the Outsider, by Michiko Kakutani
- Carlos Lozada in The New York Times, for his column reviewing Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, by Paul Dans and Steven Groves (editors)
- Jeremy Lybarger in The New Republic, for his review of Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring, by Brad Gooch
- Laura Miller in Slate, for her review of One Way Back, by Christine Blasey Ford
Among smaller publications, finalists are:
- Christoph Irmscher in CounterPunch, for his review of Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right, by Arlie Hochschild
- David Klion in The Nation, for his review of The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore American Foreign Policy After Trump, by Alexander Ward
- Jordan Michael Smith in Democracy Journal, for his review of Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew, by Avi Shlaim
- Benno Weiner in the Los Angeles Review of Books, for his review of At the Edge of Empire: A Family’s Reckoning with China, by Edward Wong
- Emily Wilson in The Nation, for her review of Wrong Norma, by Anne Carson
ABOUT OUR JUDGES
Five judges selected this year’s finalists and winners, generously donating their time and invaluable guidance. They are:
- Sara Bhatia, an independent museum consultant who writes about museums, history, and culture, and frequently reviews books for the Washington Monthly.
- Stephen Braun, the co-author of Merchant of Death, a 2007 book profiling the world’s most notorious arms dealer, and a prize-winning former national correspondent and editor with the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press. His stories ranged from presidential political coverage to foreign and domestic terrorism to national and international investigative reporting. Before joining AP, Braun worked 25 years at the Los Angeles Times as a national correspondent based in Washington and Chicago and as an editor and reporter in Los Angeles. His investigative reporting after the September 11th attacks was included in a Times entry that won an Overseas Press Club award, and he was among a group of Times reporters whose coverage of the 1992 Los Angeles riots won a Pulitzer Prize for general reporting. His investigative work also led to an examination of the Taliban’s covert use of Russian-owned aircraft to import weapons and operatives. Merchant of Death, with journalist Douglas Farah, profiled the man who owned those planes – Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was later sent to federal prison for his crimes, and sent back to Russia by the Biden administration last year in exchange for basketball star Brittney Griner. Braun has been a visiting professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School, and an invited speaker on many leading media outlets, universities, and think tanks.
- Dr. Allen C. Guelzo, the Thomas W. Smith Distinguished Research Scholar in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, where he also directs the Madison Program’s Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship. He is the author of Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America, and Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America. His book on the battle of Gettysburg, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion was a New York Times best seller in 2013. From 2006 to 2012, he was a member of the National Council on the Humanities. Together with Patrick Allitt and Gary W. Gallagher, he team-taught The Teaching Company’s American History series, and has completed other five series for The Teaching Company. He has written Reconstruction: A Concise History and Robert E. Lee: A Life, which was named by the Wall Street Journal as one of Ten Best Books for 2021. His newest books are Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy and the American Experiment, which won the Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Prize, and Voices from Gettysburg: Letters, Papers, and Memoirs from the Greatest Battle of the Civil War. His website is www.allenguelzo.com.
- Judy Pasternak, the author of Yellow Dirt, a critically acclaimed nonfiction book about the slow-motion environmental catastrophe on the Navajo Nation set off by uranium mining to fuel the Manhattan Project and Cold War nuclear bombs. She was also the founding editor of Gartner Business Quarterly and a member of the Los Angeles Times’ national investigations team. Her work has won multiple awards for literary, environmental and investigative journalism. In addition, she has served as a juror for the Lukas Book Prize, the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism, the Risser Prize for Western Environmental Journalism and the Robert F. Kennedy Awards for Excellence in Journalism.
- Terence Samuel, a writer and veteran journalist who has written extensively about the changes in American life over the last 40 years. He is the author of the 2010 book The Upper House: A Journey Behind the Closed Doors of the United States Senate, and his work as a political columnist was anthologized in Best American Political Writing of 2009. Samuel is the former editor-in-chief at USA Today and served as Vice President & Executive Editor at NPR. From 2011 to 2017, he was a politics editor at The Washington Post, overseeing White House and congressional coverage. He began his career as a writing fellow at The Village Voice in New York and later was a reporter at The Roanoke Times & World News, a national correspondent at both The Philadelphia Inquirer and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and chief congressional correspondent at U.S. News & World Report.
ABOUT KUKULA KAPOOR GLASTRIS
The beloved and brilliant books editor of the Washington Monthly, Kukula (“Kuku” to her legions of friends and fans), made the book review section home to some of the magazine’s best thinking and writing. A keen editor and diplomatic manager of writers, she served as den mother and provisioner of delicious late-night home-cooked meals to a generation of young Washington Monthly journalists. “I’ve never met anyone whose combination of personal goodness, plus intellectual and professional abilities, exceeded Kukula’s,” wrote James Fallows in The Atlantic.
To learn more about Kukula’s life, please read Kuku: A Love Story.
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