Since 2011, Zócalo Public Square has awarded our annual book prize to the U.S.-published nonfiction book that best enhances our understanding of community and the forces that strengthen or undermine human connectedness and social cohesion.

Our hometown, Los Angeles, is a place where the traffic, sprawl, pace, and expense can make connection feel elusive. This past year has tested our commitment to one another and to this place further, first through the devastating fires and then through the federal government’s attacks on our neighbors. As L.A. comes together to heal, the book prize, and Zócalo’s commitment to building community in our city, feel particularly meaningful. We are grateful to screenwriter and philanthropist Tim Disney for supporting L.A. and Zócalo by once again sponsoring our literary prize program, which also includes the Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize.

The 2026 Zócalo Book Prize selection committee consists of 2025 Zócalo Book Prize winner and The New Breadline author Jean-Martin Bauer, journalist Charles Fleming, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace climate mobility scholar Liliana Gamboa, ASU Mechanics of Democracy Laboratory director and Zócalo Advisory Board member Bill Gates, Skirball Cultural Center president and CEO Jessie Kornberg, Texas Tribune CEO Sonal Shah, and USC sociologist Jody Agius Vallejo.

The author of the winning book will receive $10,000 and participate in a public program in Los Angeles in spring 2026. We will also recognize the authors of the books we select for our shortlist. For more information about the prize, please contact us at bookprize@zocalopublicsquare.org.

The deadline to submit is October 10, 2025, at 11:59 PM PDT. Books must be published in the U.S. between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2025, to be eligible. Please send a single copy of any book nominated for the prize, along with a submission letter containing publisher or author contact information and publication date to:

ASU California Center Broadway
Attn: Zócalo Public Square, Book Prize
919 S. Grand Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90015

The 15 previous Zócalo Public Square Book Prize recipients represent the breadth of expertise and experience we seek in our submissions. They study and write about famine and friendship, economics and immigration, and a variety of countries and time periods. They are:

• Jean-Martin Bauer for The New Breadline: Hunger and Hope in the 21st Century (Knopf)
• Héctor Tobar for Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino” (MCD/Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
• Michelle Wilde Anderson for The Fight to Save the Town: Reimagining Discarded America (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster)
• Heather McGhee for The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together (One World)
• Jia Lynn Yang for One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965 (W. W. Norton & Company)
• William Sturkey for Hattiesburg: An American City in Black and White (Belknap/Harvard University Press)
• Omer Bartov for Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz (Simon & Schuster)
• Michael Ignatieff for The Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order in a Divided World (Harvard University Press)
• Mitchell Duneier for Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• Sherry Turkle for Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age (Penguin Press)
• Danielle Allen for Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality (Liveright Publishing)
• Ethan Zuckerman for Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection (W. W. Norton & Company)
• Jonathan Haidt for The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion(Pantheon)
• Richard Sennett for Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation (Yale University Press)
• Peter Lovenheim for In the Neighborhood: The Search for Community on an American Street, One Sleepover at a Time (Perigee Books)