The New York Public Library Selects Five Finalists for the 39th Annual Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism

The finalist titles: Bad Company; Empire of A.I.; There is No Place for Us; Unbearable; We are Eating the Earth

The New York Public Library is delighted to announce five finalists for its 39th annual Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. Highly competitive, the Bernstein Award recognizes non-fiction, English-language books authored by working journalists and published in 2025 that raise awareness about current events or issues of global or national significance. The winner, who will receive a $15,000 cash prize, will be announced in early April.

This year’s finalists, listed in alphabetical order by title, are:  

• Bad Company: Private equity and the death of the American dream by Megan Greenwell
• Empire of A.I.: Dreams and nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI by Karen Hao
• There is No Place for Us: Working and homeless in America by Brian Goldstone
• Unbearable: Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America by Irin Carmon
• We are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate by Michael Grunwald

The books are available to NYPL cardholders for check-out in various formats at the Library.

This year’s finalists report urgent topics that are affecting societies around the world, including the long shadow private equity casts over communities, the AI arms race, the struggles of working people to remain housed, pregnancy care in America, and modern food systems’ degradation of the planet. 

The Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism was established in 1987 through a gift from Joseph Frank Bernstein in honor of journalist Helen Bernstein Fealy.

Of more than 100 books nominated by their publishers, the finalists were elected by an 11-person Library Review Committee. The six-member Bernstein selection committee, which is composed of professional journalists, will select the winner. Previous winners include Mike Hixenbaugh, who won last year for his book They Came for the Schools: One Town’s Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New War for America’s Classrooms and journalists Patricia Evangelista, Ben Rawlence, Jill Leovy, Katherine Boo, Charlie Savage, and Dan Fagin. 

Additional information about the finalists:

• Bad Company: Private equity and the death of the American dream by Megan Greenwell (HarperCollins)Private equity runs our country, yet few Americans have any idea how ingrained it is in their lives. Bad Companyunearths the hidden story of corporate greed and the world of private equity by examining the lives of four American workers that were devastated as private equity upended their employers and communities. Taken together, their individual experiences also pull back the curtain on a much larger project: how the relentless pursuit of shareholder value reshaped the American economy to serve its own interests, creating a new class of billionaires while stripping ordinary people of their livelihoods, their health care, their homes, and their sense of security.Megan Greenwell is a journalist who has written or edited for publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, WIRED, and ESPN. She is also the deputy director of the Princeton Summer Journalism Program, a workshop and college access initiative for students from low-income backgrounds. A California native, she lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their pug.
• Empire of A.I.: Dreams and nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI by Karen Hao (Penguin Press)From a brilliant longtime AI insider with intimate access to the world of Sam Altman’s OpenAI from the beginning, Empire of A.I. is an eye-opening account of arguably the most fateful tech arms race in history, reshaping the planet in real time, from the cockpit of the company that is driving the frenzy. By drawing on the viewpoints of Silicon Valley engineers, Kenyan data laborers, and Chilean water activists, Hao presents the fullest picture of AI and its impact we’ve seen to date, alongside a trenchant analysis of where things are headed. With an astonishing eyewitness view, Empire of A.I. pierces the veil of the industry defining our era.Karen Hao is an award-winning journalist covering the impacts of artificial intelligence on society. She co-hosts the BBC podcast The Interface and contributes to publications including More Perfect Union and The Atlantic. She also co-created the Pulitzer Center’s AI Spotlight Series, a program that has trained thousands of journalists around the world on how to cover AI. She was formerly a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, covering American and Chinese tech companies, and a senior editor for AI at MIT Technology Review. She has received numerous accolades for her coverage, including an American Humanist Media Award, an American National Magazine Award for Journalists Under 30, and a TIME100 AI honor. She received her Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from MIT.
• There is No Place for Us: Working and homeless in America by Brian Goldstone (Penguin Random House)Skyrocketing rents, low wages, and a lack of tenant rights have produced a startling phenomenon: People with full-time jobs cannot keep a roof over their head, especially in America’s booming cities, where rapid growth is leading to catastrophic displacement. These families are being forced into homelessness not by a failing economy but a thriving one. In this gripping and deeply reported book, Brian Goldstone plunges readers into the lives of five Atlanta families struggling to remain housed in a gentrifying, increasingly unequal city. By turns heartbreaking and urgent, There Is No Place for Us illuminates the true magnitude, causes, and consequences of the new American homelessness—and shows that it won’t be solved until housing is treated as a fundamental human right.Brian Goldstone is a journalist whose longform reporting and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, The New Republic, The California Sunday Magazine, and Jacobin, among other publications. He has a PhD in anthropology from Duke University and was a Mellon Research Fellow at Columbia University. In 2021, he was a National Fellow at New America. He lives in Atlanta with his family.
• Unbearable: Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America by Irin Carmon (Simon & Schuster) Unbearable is an ambitious and passionate exploration of what’s gone wrong with pregnancy in America, through the lens of history, politics, and the searing experiences of five women. Written with deep empathy and analytical rigor, Unbearable is at once a moving story of interconnection, a harrowing exposé, and an assertion of humanity. Above all, it is a powerful call for solidarity, regardless of our circumstances or our decisions.Irin Carmon is an award-winning senior correspondent at New York magazine, where she covers gender, law, politics, and more. Previously, she was a CNN contributor, a contributing writer to The Washington Post’s “Outlook”, a national reporter at MSNBC and NBC News, and a staff writer at Salon and Jezebel. She is the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Notorious RBG. She lives in New York City with her husband and two daughters. 
• We are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate by Michael Grunwald (Simon & Schuster)Humanity has cleared a land mass the size of Asia plus Europe to grow food, and our food system generates a third of our carbon emissions. We are eating the earth, and the greatest challenge facing our species will be slowing our relentless expansion of farmland into nature. In this rollicking, shocking narrative, Michael Grunwald shows how the world, after decades of ignoring the climate problem at the center of our plates, has pivoted to making it worse, embracing solutions that sound sustainable but could make it even harder to grow more food with less land. Michael Grunwald is the bestselling author of two widely acclaimed books, The Swamp and The New New Deal. He’s a former staff writer for The Washington Post, Time, and POLITICO Magazine. He lives in Miami. 

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