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Wilson Center Scholars' Books Rank Among Best of the Year

Wilson Center authors received high praise from the nation's top literary critics as books by four present and former Wilson Center scholars made the Washington Post's list of Best Nonfiction Books of 2006.

Wilson Center authors received high praise from the nation's top literary critics as books by four present and former Wilson Center scholars made the Washington Post's list of Best Nonfiction Books of 2006.

Prisoners: a Muslim and a Jew across the Middle East Divide is a "sensitive, forthright, and perceptive account" of Jeffrey Goldberg's experience as an Israeli soldier keeping watch over a Palestinian prisoner. Goldberg, a staff writer at the New Yorker, worked on the book while he was a Public Policy Scholar at the Wilson Center from 2002 to 2003. Prisoners was also featured in the New York Times "100 Notable Books of the Year."

Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone, written by Rajiv Chandrasekaran while he was a Public Policy Scholar at the Center in 2005, was hailed as an "indispensable" account of the American occupation of Baghdad. Chandrasekaran is a former journalist-in-residence at the International Reporting Project at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and an assistant managing editor at the Washington Post.

Waiting ‘til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America, a social history of the Black Power movement by Peniel E. Joseph, was acclaimed by the Washington Post as "an engaging revisionist narrative." Joseph, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at SUNY-Stony Brook, worked on the book while he was a Fellow at the Center from 2002-2003.

Fragile Innocence: A Father's Memoir of His Daughter's Courageous Journey recalls Senior Scholar James Reston, Jr.'s family's ordeal when his youngest daughter suffers from a mysterious illness that robbed her of language at age 2 and nearly killed her as a child. The "carefully crafted" memoir is Reston's 13th book.

Additionally, Salon.com included Solovyovo: The Story of Memory in a Russian Village by Kennan Institute Senior Associate Margaret Paxson on its list of the year's best books.