The finalist titles: Bad Company;\u00a0Empire of A.I.;\u00a0There is No Place for Us;\u00a0Unbearable; We are Eating the Earth<\/p>\n
The New York Public Library is delighted to announce five finalists for its 39th annual\u00a0Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism<\/a>. Highly competitive, the Bernstein Award recognizes non-fiction, English-language books authored by working journalists and published in 2025 that raise awareness about current events or issues of global or national significance. The winner, who will receive a $15,000 cash prize, will be announced in early April.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s finalists, listed in alphabetical order by title, are:\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The books\u00a0are available<\/a>\u00a0to NYPL cardholders for check-out in various formats at the Library.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s finalists report urgent topics that are affecting societies around the world, including the long shadow private equity casts over communities, the AI arms race, the struggles of working people to remain housed, pregnancy care in America, and modern food systems\u2019 degradation of the planet.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism was established in 1987 through a gift from Joseph Frank Bernstein in honor of journalist Helen Bernstein Fealy.<\/p>\n Of more than 100 books nominated by their publishers, the finalists were elected by an 11-person Library Review Committee. The six-member Bernstein selection committee, which is composed of professional journalists, will select the winner. Previous winners include Mike Hixenbaugh, who won last year for his book\u00a0They Came for the Schools: One Town\u2019s Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New War for America\u2019s Classrooms\u00a0and journalists Patricia Evangelista, Ben Rawlence, Jill Leovy, Katherine Boo, Charlie Savage, and Dan Fagin.\u00a0<\/p>\n Additional information about the finalists:<\/p>\n Bad Company: Private equity and the death of the American dream\u00a0by Megan Greenwell (HarperCollins)Private equity runs our country, yet few Americans have any idea how ingrained it is in their lives.\u00a0Bad Companyunearths the hidden story of corporate greed and the world of private equity by examining the lives of four American workers that were devastated as private equity upended their employers and communities. Taken together, their individual experiences also pull back the curtain on a much larger project: how the relentless pursuit of shareholder value reshaped the American economy to serve its own interests, creating a new class of billionaires while stripping ordinary people of their livelihoods, their health care, their homes, and their sense of security.Megan Greenwell\u00a0is a journalist who has written or edited for publications including\u00a0The New York Times,\u00a0The Washington Post,\u00a0New York Magazine,\u00a0WIRED, and ESPN. She is also the deputy director of the Princeton Summer Journalism Program, a workshop and college access initiative for students from low-income backgrounds. A California native, she lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their pug.<\/p>\n Empire of A.I.: Dreams and nightmares in Sam Altman\u2019s OpenAI\u00a0by Karen Hao (Penguin Press)From a brilliant longtime AI insider with intimate access to the world of Sam Altman\u2019s OpenAI from the beginning,\u00a0Empire of A.I.\u00a0is an eye-opening account of arguably the most fateful tech arms race in history, reshaping the planet in real time, from the cockpit of the company that is driving the frenzy. By drawing on the viewpoints of Silicon Valley engineers, Kenyan data laborers, and Chilean water activists, Hao presents the fullest picture of AI and its impact we\u2019ve seen to date, alongside a trenchant analysis of where things are headed. With an astonishing eyewitness view,\u00a0Empire of A.I.\u00a0pierces the veil of the industry defining our era.Karen Hao\u00a0is an award-winning journalist covering the impacts of artificial intelligence on society. She co-hosts the BBC podcast The Interface and contributes to publications including More Perfect Union and\u00a0The Atlantic. She also co-created the Pulitzer Center\u2019s AI Spotlight Series, a program that has trained thousands of journalists around the world on how to cover AI. She was formerly a reporter for the\u00a0Wall Street Journal, covering American and Chinese tech companies, and a senior editor for AI at\u00a0MIT Technology Review. She has received numerous accolades for her coverage, including an American Humanist Media Award, an American National Magazine Award for Journalists Under 30, and a TIME100 AI honor. She received her Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from MIT.<\/p>\n There is No Place for Us: Working and homeless in America\u00a0by Brian Goldstone (Penguin Random House)Skyrocketing rents, low wages, and a lack of tenant rights have produced a startling phenomenon: People with full-time jobs cannot keep a roof over their head, especially in America\u2019s booming cities, where rapid growth is leading to catastrophic displacement. These families are being forced into homelessness not by a failing economy but a thriving one. In this gripping and deeply reported book, Brian Goldstone plunges readers into the lives of five Atlanta families struggling to remain housed in a gentrifying, increasingly unequal city. By turns heartbreaking and urgent,\u00a0There Is No Place for Us\u00a0illuminates the true magnitude, causes, and consequences of the new American homelessness\u2014and shows that it won\u2019t be solved until housing is treated as a fundamental human right.Brian Goldstone\u00a0is a journalist whose longform reporting and essays have appeared in\u00a0The New York Times, Harper\u2019s Magazine,\u00a0The New Republic,\u00a0The California Sunday Magazine, and\u00a0Jacobin, among other publications. He has a PhD in anthropology from Duke University and was a Mellon Research Fellow at Columbia University. In 2021, he was a National Fellow at New America. He lives in Atlanta with his family.<\/p>\n Unbearable: Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America\u00a0by Irin Carmon (Simon & Schuster)\u00a0Unbearable\u00a0is an ambitious and passionate exploration of what\u2019s gone wrong with pregnancy in America, through the lens of history, politics, and the searing experiences of five women. Written with deep empathy and analytical rigor,\u00a0Unbearable\u00a0is at once a moving story of interconnection, a harrowing expos\u00e9, and an assertion of humanity. Above all, it is a powerful call for solidarity, regardless of our circumstances or our decisions.Irin Carmon\u00a0is an award-winning senior correspondent at New York magazine, where she covers gender, law, politics, and more. Previously, she was a CNN contributor, a contributing writer to The Washington Post\u2019s \u201cOutlook\u201d, a national reporter at MSNBC and NBC News, and a staff writer at Salon and Jezebel. She is the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller\u00a0Notorious RBG. She lives in New York City with her husband and two daughters.\u00a0<\/p>\n We are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate\u00a0by Michael Grunwald (Simon & Schuster)Humanity has cleared a land mass the size of Asia plus Europe to grow food, and our food system generates a third of our carbon emissions. We are eating the earth, and the greatest challenge facing our species will be slowing our relentless expansion of farmland into nature. In this rollicking, shocking narrative, Michael Grunwald shows how the world, after decades of ignoring the climate problem at the center of our plates, has pivoted to making it worse, embracing solutions that sound sustainable but could make it even harder to grow more food with less land.\u00a0Michael Grunwald\u00a0is the bestselling author of two widely acclaimed books, The Swamp and The New New Deal. He\u2019s a former staff writer for The Washington Post, Time, and POLITICO Magazine. He lives in Miami.\u00a0<\/p>\n About The New York Public Library<\/p>\n For over 125 years, The New York Public Library has been a free provider of education and information for the people of New York and beyond. With over 90 locations\u2014including research and branch libraries\u2014throughout the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island, the Library offers free materials, computer access, classes, exhibitions, programming and more to everyone from toddlers to scholars. The New York Public Library receives millions of visits through its doors annually and millions more around the globe who use its resources at\u00a0www.nypl.org<\/a>. To offer this wide array of free programming, The New York Public Library relies on both public and private funding. Learn more about how to support the Library at\u00a0nypl.org\/support<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\tLike this:<\/p>\n Like Loading…<\/p>\n