ROBERT F. KENNEDY BOOK AWARD 1981-2003

The Robert F. Kennedy Book Award was founded in 1980 with the proceeds from Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s best-selling biography, Robert Kennedy and His Times. Each year the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial presents an award to the book which "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 Awards have received international recognition as one of the most prestigious honors an author can achieve.

Each year, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and John Seigenthaler, the chairs of the Award, choose an independent panel of four judges to select the winner. Past judges include Alex Haley, Mary McGrory, Marian Wright Edelman, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Archibald Cox, George Plimpton, E.L. Doctorow, Caroline Kennedy, Morris Dees, Lauren Bacall, Anna Quindlen, Julian Bond and Richard Neustadt. In the following table we show the winners for each year. In the earlier years the term "Winner" was used, in the latter years the term "Grand Prize Winner" has been used.