The 2015 winners were celebrated on May 3, 2016.

The 2015-2016 New York City Book Award winners were

Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861-2008 by Robin Jaffee Frank (The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art/Yale University Press)

Prince of Darkness: The Untold Story of Jeremiah G. Hamilton, Wall Street's First Black Millionaire by Shane White (St. Martin's Press)

City on a Grid: How New York Became New York by Gerard Koeppel (Da Capo Press)

One Righteous Man: Samuel Battle and the Shattering of the Color Line in New York by Arthur Browne (Beacon Press)

The Hornblower Award for a First Book
Reading Publics: New York City's Public Libraries, 1754-1911 by Tom Glynn (Empire State Editions/Fordham University Press)

Special Citation for Two Iconic New York City Writers
Vivian Gornick
author most recently of The Odd Woman and the City: A Memoir (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux)

Roger Angell
author most recently of This Old Man: All in Pieces (Doubleday)

Trustee and presenter Ellen M. Iseman; Warren Wechsler and Lucienne S. Bloch; presenter Barnet Schecter with winner Tom Glynn

Jean Parker Phifer presents the award for ONE RIGHTEOUS MAN; presenter Ella Foshay with winner Robin Jaffee Frank; Warren Wechsler and winner Gerard Koeppel

Special Citation recipients Roger Angell (left) and Vivian Gornick (right) with presenter James Atlas

Winners Tom Glynn, Robin Jaffee Frank, and Gerard Koeppel with a cake celebrating the awards' 20th anniversary

The New York City Book Awards were generously underwritten by Ellen M. Iseman. The Hornblower Award was generously underwritten by Jenny Lawrence.