The 2023 Zócalo Book Prize Honors Explorations of Community

We’re Looking for the Best Nonfiction Books on Human Connection

Since 2011, Zócalo Public Square’s annual book prize has recognized the U.S.-published nonfiction book that best enhances our understanding of community and the forces that strengthen or undermine human connectedness and social cohesion. Zócalo is grateful to screenwriter and philanthropist Tim Disney for his continuing sponsorship of our literary prize program, which also includes the Zócalo Poetry Prize.

Our mission is to connect people to ideas and to each other, which is why we have honored authors who explore these themes for over a dozen years now. Whether it’s a public …

September 8, 2022

Heather McGhee Wins the 2022 Zócalo Book Prize

The Sum of Us Shows How Racism Costs Us All, and What Americans Can Do to Prosper Together

Interview by Sarah Rothbard | April 25, 2022

Heather McGhee, the former president of the think tank Demos and a scholar of economic and social policy, is the winner of the 2022 Zócalo Public Square Book Prize for …

Historian William Sturkey Wins the 10th Annual Zócalo Book Prize

Hattiesburg, an Intimate Look at a Segregated Southern City, Delivers a ‘Finely Woven Microcosm of American Society’

Interview by Sarah Rothbard | April 16, 2020

Since 2011, the Zócalo Public Square Book Prize has honored the author of the U.S. nonfiction book published in the previous year that best enhances our understanding of community and …

Historian Omer Bartov Wins the Ninth Annual Zócalo Book Prize

Anatomy of a Genocide Is ‘a Haunting Warning of the Fragility of Order and Goodness in Our World’

March 4, 2019

Omer Bartov, John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History at Brown University, is the winner of the ninth annual Zócalo Book Prize for Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life …

Historian and Political Philosopher Michael Ignatieff Wins the Eighth Annual Zócalo Book Prize

The Ordinary Virtues Examines How Trust, Honesty, and Respect Can Glue a Fractured World Back Together

April 3, 2018

Michael Ignatieff—president and rector of the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, former leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, and writer, most recently of The Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order …

Princeton Sociologist Mitchell Duneier Wins the 2017 Zócalo Book Prize

Ghetto Investigates the History of a Word, a Place, and an Idea That Has Shaped Our Cities and Culture

March 31, 2017

Mitchell Duneier, author of Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea and a sociologist at Princeton University, is the winner of the seventh annual Zócalo Book …

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