Today—Monday, April 12—my book
The First Tycoon was named the winner of the
Pulitzer Prize in biography.
To say that I am honored is to indulge in extreme understatement. Frankly, I'm a very lucky man.
The First Tycoon previously won the National Book Award for nonfiction, which boggled my mind. I hardly expected it to win the Pulitzer Prize as well. This is not false modesty. Some of our greatest writers have never won either prize, let alone both in one year.
This is not to slight the selection process, either. Winnowing a field down to just one book can be absurdly difficult, even arbitrary at a certain point. Last year saw an array of truly outstanding biographies, from
Cheever and
Woodrow Wilson (both finalists for the Pulitzer) to
Koestler. Both the National Book Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Book Prize jury left my book off their short lists—and there were no mobs in the streets, chanting protests. A writer is never
owed a prize, and should never expect one when the field is so crowded with excellence.
What I take from this honor is not a sense that my book is the best one out there. Rather, I feel as if the jury is saying that I succeeded in meeting my ambitions for my book. I've been included in a small group who have won both the NBA and the Pulitzer for the same book. This select bunch includes two writers who have, in many ways, served as models for me: Richard Rhodes and Robert Caro. I admire how they combine literary and scholarly virtues in their work. Their research and analysis is first-rate, but they also craft beautifully written narratives with compelling stories and three-dimensional characters. Frankly, I don't think I write at their level, but I am inspired by their example. Winning the Pulitzer tells me that this kind of writing is still highly valued. And for that I'm grateful—as a writer
and a reader.
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