NYPL Announces 2023 Finalists for Bernstein Excellence in Journalism Award

The New York Public Library has shared the five finalists for its 2023 Bernstein Book Award. The award, currently in its 36th year and named after journalist Helen Bernstein Fealy, honors nonfiction books by journalists that highlight current issues on a national or global scale. This year’s finalists cover issues that range from discrimination against Black Americans to the everyday effects of social media on the psyche.

To qualify for nomination, books had to have been published in 2022 and selected by an 11-person Library Review Committee. The committee whittled down a list of more than 110 books to arrive at the group of five finalists, from which the Berstein Selection Committee of five professional journalists will choose a winner.

The finalists are as follows:

The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World by Max Fisher (Little, Brown and Company)

My Fourth Time We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on the World’s Deadliest Migration Route by Sally Hayden (Melville House)

The Other Side of Prospect: A Story of Violence, Injustice, and the American City by Nicholas Dawidoff (W. W. Norton & Company)

The Treeline: The Last Forest and the Future of Life on Earth by Ben Rawlence (St. Martin’s Press)

Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of our Nation by Linda Villarosa (Doubleday)

A winner will be announced in May.

Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books.