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

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 The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together.

Zócalo awards the $10,000 prize annually to the nonfiction book that most enhances our understanding of community and the forces that strengthen or undermine human connectedness and social cohesion. McGhee, our 12th annual winner, joins a distinguished group of authors that includes Danielle Allen, Michael Ignatieff, Sherry …

Interview by Sarah Rothbard | April 25, 2022

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 …

Can We Close the Empathy Gap?

Sixth Annual Zócalo Book Prize Winner Sherry Turkle Thinks We Can Learn How to Talk—and Connect—Again as Humans

By Sarah Rothbard | May 12, 2016

Zócalo Publisher Gregory Rodriguez said he was terrified as he opened a discussion onstage at MOCA Grand Avenue with MIT’s Sherry Turkle.

It wasn’t, however, because he was moderating in front …

book prize