2007: "THE GREAT DELUGE", BY DOUGLAS BRINKLEY

Judges: Mark Bailey, Gwen Ifill, David Nasaw, John Seigenthaler, Sr., and Jim Wooten.

Grand Prize Winner:
The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, by Douglas Brinkley.

Distinguished Honors:
At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years 1965-68, by Taylor Branch.

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Douglas Brinkley's The Great Deluge wins RFK Book Award, Taylor Branch's At Canaan's Edge receives Distinguished Honors

The Grand Prize for the 2006 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award goes to Douglas Brinkley for his book, The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Taylor Branch received Distinguished Honors for his book At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years 1965-68. RFK Book Award judge, Gwen Ifill of PBS praised The Great Deluge noting, "With the detail of a great historian, and the urgency of a survivor, [Brinkley] chronicles the drowning of a great American city in a manner designed to ensure that mistakes are not forgotten.""Similarly, Taylor Branch's At Canaan's Edge is a rich narrative that reminds us of the hard decisions and all-too-human personalities that gave the civil rights movement such righteous momentum," remarked Ifill. "Taken together, these two books chronicle how far we have come in championing the dispossessed -- and how far we have yet to go."