Lukas prizes honor books on homelessness, the US Census and ancient India

By: Hillel Italie, The Associated Press Posted: Last Modified:

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NEW YORK (AP) — Books on homelessness, the U.S. Census and ancient India are among this year's winners of prizes handed out by the J. Anthony Lukas Project, named for the late author and investigative journalist.

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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/03/2026 (210 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NEW YORK (AP) — Books on homelessness, the U.S. Census and ancient India are among this year’s winners of prizes handed out by the J. Anthony Lukas Project, named for the late author and investigative journalist.

The winners were announced Tuesday by the project’s administrators, the Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

Jeff Hobbs’ “Seeking Shelter: A Working Mother, Her Children, and a Story of Homelessness in America” won the Lukas Book Prize, a $10,000 honor given for exemplifying “literary grace, commitment to serious research and social concern.” The Mark Lynton Prize for history, a $10,000 award for combining “literary grace, commitment to serious research and social concern,” was given to William Dalrymple’s “The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World.”

This combination of book cover images show
This combination of book cover images show "Seeking Shelter: A Working Mother, Her Children, and a Story of Homelessness in America" by Jeff Hobbs, left, and "The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World" by William Dalrymple. (Scribner via AP, left, and Bloomsbury via AP)

The Lukas Work-in-Progress Awards, for which each winner receives $25,000, went to danah boyd, for “Data Are Made, Not Found: A Story of Politics, Power, and the Civil Servants Who Saved the U.S. Census” and Karim Zidan for “In the Shadow of the Cage.”

The Lukas prizes were established in 1998. Previous winners include Robert Caro,
Isabel Wilkerson and Jill Lepore.

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