The 2002-2003 New York City Book Awards

The 2002 winners were honored at a ceremony on May 1, 2003.

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Covers of the 2002-2003 NYC Book Awards winners

Book of the Year

Coney Island: Lost and Found by Charles Denson (Ten Speed Press)

Award for Journalism

American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center by William Langewiesche (North Point Press)

Award for a Children's Book

Fireboat: The Heroic Adventures of the John J. Harvey by Maira Kalman (Putnam Juvenile)

Award for Architectural History

Harlem Lost and Found by Michael Henry Adams and Paul Rocheleau (The Monacelli Press)

Award for Landscape History

Modern Arcadia: Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and the Plan for Forest Hills Gardens by Susan L. Klaus (University of Massachusetts Press)

Special Citation of Merit

Digitization of the New York Times: 1851-1999 by ProQuest Company

Charles Denson

Charles Denson

Juror Christopher Gray on Coney Island: Lost and Found:

Denson, who lives in California but grew up in Coney Island, combines local history, personal memoir and political science in a work which is part monograph and part scrapbook, bringing the history of Coney Island, both grand and gritty, up to the 21st century. The graphic richness alone - ancient photographs, 1950's ticket stubs, grainy 1960's snapshots and recent pictures of Coney Island's garish colors - make this a notable work. This is the king of Coney Island books.

Maira Kalman

Maira Kalman

Michael Henry Adams

Michael Henry Adams

Juror Hope Cooke on Harlem Lost and Found:

Michael Adams's long awaited Harlem Lost and Found illustrated by Paul Rocheleau richly illuminated Harlem's lapidary architecture. It also gestures at the web of social historical forces underpinning the neighborhood's built environs. It is a lovely book, beautifully produced.

Juror Elizabeth Barlow Rogers on Modern Arcadia:

Susan Klaus's Modern Arcadia is an important book in the history of city planning, a well-researched history of the creation of Forest Hills Gardens in Queens, New York, the Russell Sage Foundation's early twentieth-century model commuter suburb. Klaus positions her subject in the context of the garden cities movement in Europe and America, showing how the design team led by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., created a leafy community that a hundred years later remains one of the city's pleasantest neighborhoods.

Photos by Michael Ortiz.