National Jewish Book Awards

I don't always agree with the judges of book awards, but I love having a list of books that a panel of people have ranked as worth reading. In that sense, the finalists are as interesting as the winners to me.

The National Jewish Book Awards are particularly important because books with Jewish themes or content don't always make best-seller lists.  These awards are an easy way to discover new books and authors.

Jewish Book Council announced its 2018 National Book Award winners this month. Here's the concise listing of the winners. (You can find a full list of winners and finalists here.)

The winners of the Everett Family Foundation Book of the Year were Beate and Serge Klarsfeld for their book, Hunting the Truth.

In the field of fiction, top honors went to:

• Michael David Lukas for The Last Watchman of Old Cairo.
• Ronald Balson, whose book The Girl from Berlin won The Miller Family Book Club Award in Memory of Helen Dunn Weinstein and June Keit Miller.
• Bram Presser for The Book of Dirt, which won the Goldberg Prize for Debut Fiction.

In the field of autobiography and memoir awards went to:

• Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak won the Krauss Family Autobiography / Memoir Award for My Country, My Life: Fighting for Israel, Searching for Peace.
• Women's rights activist Alice Shalvi won the Barbara Dobkin Award in Women's Studies for her book, Never a Native.

Winners for books about history or the Holocaust were:

• The 2018 Holocaust Award in Memory of Ernest W. Michel went to Omer Bartov for Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz.
• The Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award for History went to Ronen Bergman for Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations.

The Berru Award in Memory of Ruth and Bernie Weinflash in the poetry category went to Erika Meitner for Holy Moly Carry Me.

The American Jewish Studies Celebrate 350 award went to Jack Wertheimer for The New American Judaism: How Jews Practice Their Religion Today.

In the Children's Literature category, honors went to Erica Perl for her book, All Three Stooges.

Several new awards were given:

• The Biography Award in Memory of Sara Berenson Stone went to Ariel Burger for Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel's Classroom.
• The Mentorship Award in Honor of Carolyn Starman-Hessel went to Susan Shapiro, a bestselling author, award-winning writing professor and journalist.
• The Paper Brigade Award for New Israeli Fiction in Honor of Jane Weitzman went to Maya Arad for Our Lady of Kazan.

This is the 68th years that the National Jewish Book Awards have been given. Award winners will be honored at a dinner on March 5 at the Bohemian National Hall in Manhattan hosted by Stephanie Butnick of Tablet Magazine's Unorthodox podcast.