Winner of the 2008 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence
in Journalism announced on May 20, 2008. This annual award is given by The
New York Public Library to a journalist who has written at book length about
an issue of contemporary concern.
Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy (Little Brown & Company) Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charlie Savage is a Washington correspondent for the Boston Globe. He covers national legal affairs with a focus on issues related to counterterrorism and executive power. He began his career as a local government and politics reporter for the Miami Herald and later earned a master's degree from Yale Law School while on a Knight Foundation journalism fellowship. Savage's work on the Bush-Cheney administration's signing statements and other efforts to expand presidential power has been widely recognized. In addition to the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, he has received the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award and the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency. Five finalists were chosen by a Library Review Committee from among 75 titles nominated for the award, which has been given since 1988. The others are:
Library President Paul LeClerc and Bernstein Selection Committee Chair, James.
F. Hoge, Jr., Editor of Foreign Affairs, Council on Foreign Relations,
presented the award at a program held at the Humanities and Social Sciences
Library. The winner was chosen from among five finalists by a Selection Committee
of professional journalists, which this year included, in addition to Mr. Hoge,
Ellis Cose, Contributing Editor, Newsweek; Harold McGraw III, Chairman,
President and CEO, The McGraw-Hill Companies; Jack Rosenthal, President, The
New York Times Company Foundation; and Elaine Sciolino, Paris Correspondent;
The New York Times, and 2001 Bernstein Award recipient for her book Persian
Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran.
About The New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award About the Library Review Committee Past winners of New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award |
