With this years lukas fridays ceremony our program is a little bit of the introduction and i hope an interesting discussion with our three winners and then with more celebration to come so thanks for all of you to share this part of the evening with us first i will tell you about this prize is you may not be as acquainted with it as we are but this is a prize in memory of tony lucas who inspired my generation the first time we started to taken college what we wanted to write and our generation grew up with a narrative nonfiction searching about social issues and Common Ground so when he passed a lot of people were inspired by his life to create this prius this is where the enterprise began it has expanded gradually for the Senior Executive in the netherlands at the time of his death in the 1997 as a reporter of serious history his children established the prize as part of a the lucas fridays project and his family has generally underwritten the prize since the inception in 1998 his wife and his children have been involved with us as thoughtful partners and participants and we are grateful for everything that they do. As the enterprise has evolved several other areas of importance of for a nonfiction writing that really he has a model for so many of us with those period since the 1960s and includes support for the fellowship at columbia and Journalism School with a 5,000 grant that professor sam friedman has led many of those students to want to publish books that have attended his classs or attend this spring seminar by application is an institution and designed to encourage and mentor every student to finish a Nonfiction Book proposal and the record of publication over the years is a jaw dropping so we are grateful. His wife is here tonight that would like to with knowledge her and think the family again and also recognize the Board Members in attendance. Thank you for your time we appreciate that. [applause] and then there are the judges who live also given great time and dedication to the quality of the winners year after year please stay and. Stand. [applause] said jonathan is known as day Award Winning author he has been a great partner of the schools. [applause] thinks for all you do at columbia is so wonderful to see such a National Institution premier Journalism School in our country so well lead and i want to welcome and thank you for coming and also to our wonderful judges because this is a serious commitment of time and with great seriousness we are appreciative not just this year but over the last 19 years. Very briefly a want to give you a sense of the Larger Mission of the lukas fridays project is. To put that mildly it is in flux and there is a series of new initiatives probably the best is parole publican as part of the Marshall Project and others that fill in the gap for the market the provides that investigative reporting that we need. There is of similar or less acute problem in Book Publishing and for years was called the crisis but the authors are not getting deviances that they need to complete the long term work. Some are but large numbers are not in need help to invest the time necessary to deliver a firstrate nonfiction. If we want to nurture narrative nonfiction in our culture, which is extraordinarily important as a vessel for a hour culture culture, we need to supplement those efforts of book publishers. That is what were trying to do so we have the great enterprise and theyre both very important to honor outstanding work those closest to the mission is the work in progress prize and the family has been generous enough that there is no a second to work in progress prize we will provide. These are extraordinarily helpful to help the authors complete the work they were put on earth to do because you would not believe the small sizes of the advances and there are many books one example was factory me in starring tom hanks and she would not have been able to finish the book she did not get the boot this award the lucas award and there are plenty of other examples so we see this as a Central Mission to help of others that are engaged in work and i would recommend you to look for people that you know, that could apply for this award or even find another because my goal is to have 546 or 10 of these work in progress towards so we could be a force to nurture important american nonfiction so with that i want to introduce ann marie hell provide the awards for this years winners. [applause] i just want to say what an honor it is to coated minister this prize. Tony lukas is an esteemed alum of the fellowship the only time i met him was on my own fellowship at harvard and he was an inspiration to a generation and remain so to the new kids coming up. Is such an honor to be a part of this. But the j. Anthony lukas is to nonfiction on the topic of political concern that exemplifies the great commitment to research and social responsibility that characterizes the work of the namesake the judges this year were Richard Joyce in this years winner is gary younge editoratlarge and a fellow at bin Nation Institute for his book another day in the death of america it tells the story of lives lost in a single day to gun violence. A book about america and kids three particular lens at a particular moment with an urgent portrait of ted young lions ended due to gun violence in cities across america of his reporting illustrates the Collateral Damage of what is happening every day in a society that has the political culture apparently incapable to create a world that they might be prevented. [applause] the finalist is zachary for his book that shows how voting restrictions underline american democracy for the most vulnerable americans. A former National Reporter for msnbc the judge is right in the great suppressions factory explains the rigging of american democracy by focusing on gerrymandering and active as of dark many in targeted Voter Suppression to help produce the right wing minority takeover at all levels this book exposes highways will and powerful group has offered for decades largely under their radar to return power to those for whom it was reserved for the nations founders though White Property owning and. They never saw it coming or never had a coherent defense but this book belongs in every American College students backpack. [applause] the aventine history prize for any subject at best combines expression and the shears judges, thank you. The winner is Tyler Anbinder from George Washington in of university for his book city of dreams the citation reads setting himself the Impossible Task to write a history of new york immigration from the founding through present. He succeeds a splendidly extracting a kaleidoscopic narrative through wealth of research in introducing us shortly after the dutch sledder it sellers came out of the wilderness and after that trading post before moving onward to the chinese and caribbean immigration focusing on that era to transform the city at the country the route the offers are emblematic skyros the result is ambitious and intimate and with varying degrees of success each transforms the promised land. Peas seems to know instinctively how long to inhabit the story whether the early 20th century woman on the island were from liberty herself he does not forget his own great grandparents crackling with immigrant energy about the of passed in the future that supported more americans than any thought between the kingdom of heaven. [applause] and this years finalist by adam who is a lecturer at the graduate school of journalism and a prolific author in the citation reads. Gave his head graceful highly romantic account of what happened to 1,000 americans joined the forces in 1937 mostly communist Party Members with military experience knowing no spanish would fight to the million man professional army and to be equipped by mussolini. The result was heartbreakingly unpredictable no virilism could overcome the weaponry and as the officers were the pair of 08 soviet divisors many were killed or died of disease but others considered it the finest time of their lives armed with research and a rare gift of storytelling guess their experience a fresh immediacy and relevance we are sorry he cannot be with us tonight. [applause] we congratulate him anyway and the work in progress toward for a completion of a significant work on the topic of social concern Christopher Leonard from the Schmidt FamilyFoundation Fellow from the new American Foundation has won the 25,000 reward for his work kochland the judges wrote. Christopher Leonard Kochland is a timely relevant balanced and master for will work in journalism as one of their riches conglomerate in the United States with that portrait of american Corporate Power using Coach Industries as a microcosm to reveal the mastery of a complex markets and most important to show why we live in a hollow economy corporations profit handsomely while middleclass americans fail to reach that gain of prosperity. Christopher leonard. [applause] and a the final list from denver won the 5,000 reward for her work the judge is right. To document the year in one classroom at South High School in Denver Colorado with particular expertise in handling refugee students spending one year in the classroom with their teacher to provide a compassionate and insightful work as they struggle to master not only a new language but it entirely new way of life to those experiences of these children we see the global refugee crisis in a way that allows us all to understand what our country represents to political refugees how crucial is we need to welcome them. [applause] i shed have said my thoughts at the outset and ann marie is just fantastic now i will moderate a conversation for a few minutes and then i will open to you and then get you back to the bar at a reasonable time. [laughter] so let me ask each of the panelists to take a few minutes to talk about the intention of their work, of the origins but also some sense of what drew you to a matter what you hope it will eliminate so lets start with your work in progress and go from there. I will try to make it st. St. And short and succinct also with the importance of this fridays it takes so much time and resources so Something Like this is invaluable and this topic in particular i was drawn to Koch Industries it seemed perfectly able to talk about what is going on in our economy a book that came out a while ago i felt that was a corporation of the giants sprawling institution that touches every part of our economy from Energy Infrastructure to bluecollar and high finance and derivatives and provides a canvas to talk about what has happened in our economy. Been in a particular way because it is a privately held firm run by charles koch who is a very particular view of how the economy should be structured in the role of government to be very minimal and i feel that one pull of an argument today of what role the government should play to regulate the markets and how the market should function that is a battle that is played out today that seems like a great vehicle and i am overwhelmed with the work and his prize will help to report that out said to have the characters of this kind of women comingofage so your ambition was well described in the citation but talk about your methodology. It is wonderful to be here tonight. Asking about our inspiration my parents are here and they live close by the originally they are from ireland so that as were my inspiration comes from to be interested in immigrants and refugees from other countries. My first book was a work of immersion in journalism and this book is as well and i do love their version in journalism especially to the end of a moment with the people i am writing about realtime and getting to know them and witness what will happen next. Is a gamble because you dont know how the book will turnout we dont know the story would if you put yourself in the right place at the right time magical things can happen and in this case it wasnt clear to me that would be true for quite a while because i put myself in the classroom with teenagers who were not saying anything at all. Allotted time went by i have a very patient editor who was here this evening and they think because he believed this classroom was a good place to be and would talk to him we stuck it out and Amazing Things happened when the kids began to acquire english and i could bring some interpreters into the room to get to know them better. Is a joy and an honor to be here this evening tony lukas had the big conference i was just reminiscing with his widow about that it was an amazing thing to meet kim gm and trying to tell him how much i admired his work. Congratulations. Tyler this is a monumental book so as you outlined in the introduction you had to make choices food to the live in and out into made those effortlessly i dont know how it was but you were working in this zone for a while so how did you decide to take on such an epic form . And how did the shape those choices . The way i can about this topic the people in this room had a lot to do with it so when i was at graduate school here at columbia my mentor. [applause] and in one of his graduate seminars we read the manuscript of his book published around 1988 which was a monumental book and never imagined i could write a book like that but as we talked about it over the semester i started to think i could do Something Like that soras started to imagine which is the biggest hurdle to overcome in the works like this. So thats inspired me i decided one day i wanted to write a book. Then i came up with the atf would never tell people my idea of a bucket me like i was crazy. Nobody could turn that into a narrative. The it in 1995 i met to Bruce Nichols and he did not have that reaction he said that is a great idea when we start . I said im not ready to write that kind of book he said when you are come see me so then many years later he edited my second book but then i did cutback and we worked on that so what inspired me was having written two books that were narrowly focused with the history of the antiimmigrant know Nothing Party and to that five block neighborhood in new york i wanted a narrative challenge and there couldnt be a better one than to cover a 400 years story so that is where the idea came from. The judges provided the book but it is hard to convey that spirit because it is elegant and haunting i will let you introduce the structure and how you came to the day and the stories you working in books and newspapers for a long time but the post did introduce you to your wife your forum such an original choice there river say biased string of confidence of what the subject is but it is never one for the of engagement with the violence you just let their reporting bring us there. Did you have to fight your way how powerful this is . I am a columnist of a. M. Adamant this would be a show it is a basic statistic and then to try to find out who these kids are they pass without much. The very few of them have more than a few sentences and part of that fascination that my wife and my kids are american but i was born and raised in britain but there were two things ive found very difficult to explain and the first was health care. [laughter] and the second was guns. Every time there was a mass shooting they would say surely they would do something but to be here long enough so partly because i am british im not in the position and that would remove you also let felt like that debate was sterile and to say this explicitly it is about guncontrol so in no other western country with this be possible. And to let the story speak for themselves the weekend before thanksgiving 2013 that to help these kids that they had not died yet that would create a sense of empathy that is lacking for go so statistically it could not be likely is that different from your parents . To be a masterful and teacher and one of the ways that it succeeds with the absence of guncontrol and gun violence with a structural poverty and that trajectory through reporting. So what did you discover were the subjects that could contextualize . How many subjects did you feel they were understood . But i have spent here for 11 years so i thought i knew quite a little ready already and how quickly one can become desensitized so when you america was very segregated but they didnt know what that meant in terms of isolation. I knew there were vast amounts of inequality but i didnt know how to follow through on those circumstances. And what struck me when i asked the openended question asking the question of guns adjusted does not come up i figured it would be like traffic you wouldnt think we have to get rid of traffic and it seemed it is a waste of the imagination and that was shocking to me that every a black parent and some were latinos some were whites in the was not representative so did you think this could happen . They all said yes. I did not think it would be him. I thought it would be his brother so if you dont think this could happen but then came the realization that i factor that into my life also has a black parent even though my son was only six i had those feelings that i feared for him and the degree to which he would carry around that level of anxiety. Enormously powerful. So now with water to questions so you did not know youd be publishing in Donald Trumps america of the so much of that narrative resonates because of that i repetitious history of that exclusionary policy to revise and reinvent the city in the country with the reminder of the restrictive immigration of the teen ladies those that had certain ideas with the development or mental ability and add is excluded so how does that attempt to restrict immigration at this time resonate after the 18 eighties and others . I take the thing that we see looking at the emigration restrictions is a couple of the nests that those who oppose those restrictions early those ideas about who they are, why they come to america what type of america of they will become those are based much maurer in here say here say in that is to run american history. But the results vary a lot. We have the case of the 1920s where immigration was restricted tremendously with the exception if they wanted to emigrate from britain or ireland ordure many so then by the time you get to the 40s and 50s and america where immigrants play a much smaller role in this pacific life of the country iran and most of its history which is the a difficult time in history. A typical so with immigration restriction then war, from another place that is just as objectionable to those that they were trying to limit and then you can see those restrictions in the 20s on Eastern European immigrants now you get latino some of those become the ann welcome people then another thing that happens is a large influx of the immigrants from the caribbean like the former british colonies. There is always a is unintended and consequences that is based on ignorance. Another theme is from neighborhoods and wonderful maps and beyond that great storytelling there is of poor tread of the immigration today in 2014 were more than onethird of todays new york citys population is immigrant born elsewhere. Because the next largest that are rising sharply. And have how is this supposed to the apartment and what you find the chinese doing today is exactly the same thing. There are fewer chinese i than there were a month ago and then there were in South Brooklyn. Pretty much most of South Brooklyn has become prominently chinese and if you live in manhattan or northern brooklyn, you dont see that very much but if you get off the subway at the right stop and walk around or you go to other places where those immigrants are working and you ask them as the reporters and sociologists do, they say the same things as a year ago, better schools, fresh air, less crime, more opportunity. Those are all things chinese immigrants say today and those are the things that previous generations cited as well. Despite the impression we seem to have come immigrants must be different than those of the past and the theme of the book is every generation of immigrants recreates the story. The specifics tend to be different, but the overall story tends to be the same. Trying to get a better life if not for yourself, then your kid. Are your subject is fully aware of the changing climate that the country has produced the last six or eight months and how are they reacting . I thought you might get to me next to th, the subject being immigration. Are they fully aware. I was in a classroom where alternately by the end of the year there were 22 to spoke 14 languages and used five different alphabets and there was one teacher trying to teach them english. To give you a sense of the level of the dialogue we were able to achieve at the end of the year, i saw one of the students and she came running up to me in the hallway. What she said is my brother here, my friend here. There was a great appreciation for what was happening in the country. While were on the subject of disability to appreciate one another. It was fraught with labels and an inability to appreciate one another fully. I think what im trying to write about in my book is th as the se of learning as much as possible about other people when you dont necessarily share exactly the same cultural background of the. Weve been colleagues for a while and weve developed this amazing project for years now. I ask you something before when we were hanging out. They are obviously a very visible for some ominous force in american politics and active for such a big business conglomerate privately held, some of subject to the kind of constraints. It is a complex and changing situation right now. The one thing i will say is ive been interested to learn over time where they stand and how they view the situation. It has taken a long time and of course my reporting process who is never quick to accept the shallow reporting and ive always spent a lot of time going out and visiting the industries for decades and have been close with charles cook and i need to emphasize this institution reflects charles as privately held there is one chair man and one ceo. Its not a cartoonish caricature most people might picture. Its how the markets work and how political systems should work and that is to let human decisionmaking probably based on fold if you will separate the austrian economists of hayek that centralized control decisionmaking only causes more harm than good and even if wellintentioned government innovations, im sorry, Government Intervention only hurts more people than it helps and this is a very sincerely held view of the people that worked for this institution. So, how do they view donald trump . I would think it is fair to say they view him as ideologically inconsistent and holding these views for example cracking down on immigration, raising trade barriers. These things tha are seen to supposedly help the middle class would only do more harm than good. So they are certainly not on board with what is happening over the last year and its fair to say on support the trump agenda as a fears now is on hold so it would be naive view that they are trying to steer trump towards their point of view which they have a lot of Common Ground, extremely limited federal government. What is happening at the epa right now i think would please many people in the orbit of Coke Industries but they dont want to see Something Like the border adjustment tax which is going to intervene in the economy and healthold Certain Industries ovr others so it is a game of supporting what they think will work and then maybe fighting the interventions that they want to stop so it is a complex relationship. We were covering the big ad for a while. You spent a lot of time in the counties that end up electing President Trump out of the sense that he was going to bring. Its what you think was going on in some of the communities and you spent so much time. What hope and desperation and grenade throwing was behind the. I was reporting and talking with the union guys is the case happens to be who had been democratic voters. They feel they were not being listened to by the modern democratic party. And i feel like that sentiment was under appreciated in 2016. It wasnt just a throw the bums out or fix the system mentality that i think a lot of these people have felt really abandoned. I mean, when you see the rust belt clip for donald trump, that was i an incredible signal in my mind that these are communities that felt utterly abandoned by, i hate to use the word, the establishment in the political system that they have been fed election after election and none of that has really worked. After so many cycles of feeling that you are not listened to, a lot of these people felt they were going to try to do things into donald trump was the first publication in 30 yearpoliticiat up on a stage inside the carrier moves jobs to mexico i will pay 35 tear. Whatever you might think of that i think it was the first truly vocal political statement saying your jobs matter and im going to fight for that. And that message was in every platform of the Campaign Speech along with how repugnant journalists are. Those are the two pillars of his entire campaign. We are aware of that second thing. Let me open it up. Hands in the air would be the best way to do it. If you could take another day in the death of america and you could deposit that in the different periods youve written about in your 400 year history, what do you think he would see . What you see the reflection of a certain ethnic group or immigrant groups, do you think it would be black people who are primarily being killed, and what would that tell you or what would that tell us about the way people are being treated or who is being oppressed in america and what has changed over the years. That is a great question. The first thing you see as you mentioned before is the number of People Killed goes up exponentially once they become widely available and that is the start of the american civil war. The onset, the number of murders that would take place in new york in the year you could count on your two hands and it goes up ones guns become unavailable and the murder rate pretty much has not changed in new york since the 1870s. It has little peaks and valleys but pretty much the 1870s to today is about the same. And the main thing that happens is the introduction of guns. In terms of whos getting killed, one of the things i find is that, you know, moviemakers in particular love showing scenes of protestants and catholics fighting. And i dont know if it is the case with the murder that you looked at but typically in new york it is irish killing other irish and italians killing other italians and people within their groups. Every once in a while youll have a famous riot 63 and religiousbased riots and race riots later on. Those with most of the press. But if you were to randomly choose a day and look at the people that were cut, the immigrants arent going to be out of proportion to the rest of the population and will have been told by each other. We talk about trump a great de deal, but we also knew in the early days of the campaign they had written them off, like trump wasnt going to be that the question was that they shipped it to congress in their lowerlevel plans i guess. What do you think . I think they had their political spendings that this is something i actually wanted to ask you about in terms of your response before these days if you turn out Republican Voters will help them up and down the ballot and they knew very well supporting the congressional candidates they were supporting donald trump salute sounds like ideologically as christopher was saying, they may not line up on every particular and they may have some disagreements in terms of kind of being able to design their intentions from where they put their money, they were important factors. Christopher me want to complicate that. I would add two things and im giving away parts of the book and i shouldnt do it. I love writing about Coke Industries because they are incredibly smart. The company is incredibly smart. Whats happening politically in my mind reflects whats happening inside the corporation. One thing to remember is the roots are engineering in the complex system. Its really interesting and i think that they approach politics with a very similar mindset. And from that perspective, congress has always been there so much of the mechanics of lawmaking happens and that is where the rubber meets the road and it is very complex they dont give a public notice. Secondly, the big traders trade in the commodities markets every day. Youre not looking for one whale of a trade im going to do all this money and oil is going to go with the next six months and making a lot of money because you can never read that and in that regard the president ial Campaign Cycle is like that one big trade youre going to win and there is a jackpot that they arbut theyare not as focused on. They are truly playing a game. Theres a political vision and political plan in 1974 and in my mind, that is the basic game plan that they are using today so they can see the cycles come and go in the white house but as long as you are making all of these smaller bits across the board, you have a much better chance of getting the political vision realized. So, i dont think that 2016 matter to them as much as many people think it mattered. If trump becomes a Major Political force that is going to change things but by and large group in congress they are going to be there for the foreseeable future. And the next white house race will happen to. This question is for gary. You spoke about the reaction to how that drive for the media indicates the lives of being killed with guns. I wonder how the reporting of your boat. How do you think about this differently now lacks the conversation is taking place and i thought a lot about why when i asked the question guns didnt come up. If i said to people what do you think about guns. There was a debate and to me, the way that i think about it differently is to talk in terms of things like that would be useful in a place where a lot of people are being shot it doesnt feel like a proper place to start. And as it seems i felt like what it needed is a different narrative of itself. Imagine someone breaks into your house. The. After that, most people who tell other people with guns know them. Are you married, watch out for your wife because she might kill you. [laughter] but then it was powerful because they spoke to the homestead. It is a range of things that are essential to how america understands. The background change. They are such a central part of the countrys government power. I want to switch gears and ask questions for you because the criteria are not just the topic of the social concern or deep research but in the case of literary grace. If i could ask you about words and after youve researched your topics and looked at your notes, you hav had to write sentences i was moved by the. Can you give us an act or two about the topic of your book. I loved talking about writing often more than i like talking about history. Im not sure i have literary heroes exactly but i certainly have all models. The book battle cr battle cry om to me was a great role model of a book i kept wanting to read more and more even though it is a complicated story and there is so much detail. That was my inspiration for her work. Choosing the words is important for me is foremost in my mind is the narrative not the forefront of my mind goes in thinking about the art of breaking that down sections in each chapter yo given how the chapter plays into the narrative arc in the book and i wanted to write something that wasnt encyclopedic but had a beginning, middle and end. One of the other things that was important in the writing was another inspiration teacher had and i remember my first year of graduate School Thumbnail sketch and if you could work into your story, a great character and tell his or her story that is bt is the way you can grab your reader whats interesting is they would let you do that because he would win them over with that story. That was the whole idea was to figure out exactly how long, you dont want to say too much but those are the kind of things i thought about. Without them, they are central. In the context they tried to make an argument and it is an excuse of the argument. He won the argument to serve the interest of explaining how this happened. And so, i actually started off by describing each childs face and i would just have the childs face up on my screen and because one of my kids was sick. For what would only be a paragraph but which i sought. There was some real deep diving from data because it isnt like i walk around describing peoples faces. That seems like a wonderful note to land on some of us congratulate winners one more time. [applause] and thank you all for being here. Goodnight. In the 1980s and radioshack and Herbert Hoover secretary of commerce in those pools 90 years ago still governed the way we actually allow the resources to be used in our economy today. Professor and former chief economist of the fcc thomas talks about his book the political spectrum which looks at the history and politics of Qs Communications policy. When we went to this political system for allocating spectrum rights in 1927, within a couple of years, the regulators that the commission were renewing licenses but very carefully noting that propaganda stations will not be allowed. 1929 in the period, you had left wing stations if i could use the political term in chicago in the labor union. In free speech you might say they want to espouse their opinions and these were dubbed propaganda stations by the regulators and when they were renewed a virtual to be careful about expressing their