The RFK Book Award, partially endowed in 1980 by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. with proceeds from his biography, Robert Kennedy and His Times, is presented annually to the book that "most faithfully and forcefully reflects Robert Kennedy's purposes--his concern for the poor and the powerless, his struggle for honest and even-handed justice, his conviction that a decent society must assure all young people a fair chance, and his faith that a free democracy can act to remedy disparities of power and opportunity." The RFK Book Award has been presented to a distinguished group of authors, including Melissa Fay Greene, Vice President Al Gore, Charlayne Hunter Gault, Toni Morrison, and Alec Wilkinson.

Grand Prize Winners:
Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America / James Allen
Blood of the Liberals / George Packer

Grand Prize Winners:
Mandela: The Authorized Biography / Anthony Sampson
No Shame in My Game / Katherine S. Newman

Lifetime Achievement Award:
Marian Wright Edelman

Grand Prize Winner:
Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement / John Lewis

Distinguished Honors:
The Children / David Halberstam
With Liberty for Some: 500 Years of Imprisonment in America / Scott Christianson

Grand Prize Winner:
Race, Crime, and the Law / Randall Kennedy

First Place Winner:
The Soldiers' Tale: Bearing Witness to Modern War / Samuel Hynes

Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice / David Oshinsky (Winner)

Lifetime Achievement Award:
John Kenneth Galbraith

Circumstantial Evidence / Pete Earley (Winner)
The Politics of Rage / Dan T. Carter (Winner)

Lifetime Achievement Award:
Harry Ashmore

Speak Now Against the Day / John Egerton (Winner)

Runner Up, Memorial:
Warriors Don't Cry / Melba Patillo Beals