Finalists announced for Lukas book prizes, which champion 'serious research and social concern.'

NEW YORK (AP) — Books on slavery, the justice system, poverty and gender identity are among this year's finalists for J. Anthony Lukas prizes, named for the late investigative journalist.

Presented by the Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, the prizes honor “excellence in nonfiction that exemplifies the literary grace and commitment to serious research and social concern” that helped define Lukas, a Pulitzer Prize winner who died in 1997. Winners in previous years include Robert Caro, Isabel Wilkerson and future U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power.

Five nominees were announced Wednesday in each of three categories: the $10,000 Lukas Book Prize for a narrative on “a topic of American political or social concern,” the $10,000 Mark Lynton History Prize and the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, for which two winners each receive $25,000.

“In this climate we are thrilled to recognize books that remind us of our current social realities and the importance of rigorous research, the accumulation of facts, and the ambition to create something of artistic value, i.e. things that last," Suzy Hansen, chair of the Lukas Book Prize judging panel, said in a statement.

Book prize finalists are Richard Beck's “Homeland: The War on Terror in American Life,” Barbara Bradley Hagerty's “Bringing Ben Home: A Murder, a Conviction, and the Fight to Redeem American Justice,” Mara Kardas-Nelson's “We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky: The Seductive Promise of Microfinance,” Rebecca Nagle's “By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land” and Pamela J. Prickett's and Stefan Timmermans' "The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels."

For the history award, the nominees are Kathleen DuVal's “Native Nations: A Millennium in North America,” Justene Hill Edwards' “Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman’s Bank,” Edda L. Fields-Black's "COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War," Seth Rockman's “Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery” and Michael Waters' “The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports.”

The work-in-progress finalists are Susie Cagle's “The End of the West,” Dan Xin Huang's “Rutter: The Story of an American Underclass,” Akemi Johnson's “Better Americans: In Search of My Family’s Past in America’s Concentration Camps,” J. Weston Phippen's “We Want Them Alive: The True Story of a Massacre on the Border, and the Mothers Who Exposed a U.S. Deal that Trained the Killers,” and Joe Sexton's “Life or Death: Justice and Mercy in the Age of the School Shooter."