1998: "RACE, CRIME AND THE LAW", BY RANDALL KENNEDY; AND "THE SOLDIERS' TALE", BY SAMUEL HYNES

Judges: Alan Brinkley, John Douglas, Kaye Gibbons, Anthony Lewis, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and John Seigenthaler, Sr.

Grand Prize Winners:
Race, Crime and the Law, Randall Kennedy; and

The Soldiers' Tale: Bearing Witness to Modern War, Samuel Hynes

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Washington, D.C. (May 11, 1998) - Race, Crime, and the Law (Pantheon Books) by Harvard Law Professor Randall Kennedy has won the Grand Prize for the 18th Annual Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.

Through Race, Crime, and the Law, Randall Kennedy not only uncovers the long-standing failure of the justice system to protect blacks from criminals, but he engages in the debate over the wisdom and legality of using racial criteria in jury selection. Kennedy also analyzes the responses of the legal system to accusations that appeals to racial prejudice have rendered trials unfair; examines the idea that, under certain circumstances, members of one race are statistically more likely to be involved in crime than members of another and probes allegations that blacks are victimized on a widespread basis by racially discriminatory prosecutions and punishments.

"Race, Crime, and the Law is an original, wise and courageous work that moves beyond sterile arguments and lifts the discussion of race and justice to a new and more hopeful level," said Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Founder of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.

Randall Kennedy received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and his law degree from Yale Law School. A Rhodes Scholar, he served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. He is a professor at Harvard Law School and lives in Dedham, Mass. Race, Crime, and the Law is Kennedy's first book.

In addition, The Soldiers' Tale: Bearing Witness to Modern War (Allen Lane/Penguin) by Samuel Hynes will receive the First Place Award. The Soldiers' Tale focuses on the two World Wars and Vietnam, and on the accounts written by victims of war ñ survivors of prisoner-of-war camps, the Nazi Death camps, and the atom bomb. Hynes draws from accounts recorded under fire and from memories that look back over decades, by unknown authors whose battle memoirs are their only published work and literary memoirists like Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, Elie Wiesel and Tim O'Brien.

"This acute meditation on war and its human meaning wonderfully illuminates the darkest tests people face in this, the most terrible of centuries," said Schlesinger.

Samuel Hynes was a Marine pilot from 1943 to 1946 and from 1952 to 1953, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. He has taught at Swarthmore College, Northwestern University, and most recently at Princeton University, where he is a Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature Emeritus.