The 2025 Zócalo Book Prize Explores Social Cohesion

For 15 Years, We’ve Honored Authors Who Dive Deep Into Community and Human Connectedness

Zócalo Public Square is proud to mark the 15th year of our annual book prize, which honors the U.S.-published nonfiction book that best enhances our understanding of community and the forces that strengthen or undermine human connectedness and social cohesion. Since 2011, we have honored authors who explore these important themes, which remain at the core of our mission of connecting people to ideas and each other.

Each year seems to present new threats to human connection—from political polarization and pandemic-enforced isolation to the siloes of our digital lives. And each …

Héctor Tobar Wins the 2024 Zócalo Book Prize

Our Migrant Souls Is an Essential Exploration of ‘Latino’ Identity

Héctor Tobar is the winner of the 2024 Zócalo Public Square Book Prize for Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino.”

Zócalo has awarded …

The 2024 Zócalo Book Prize Winner Is Coming Soon

In the Meantime, Check Out Five Fantastic Shortlist Titles

The 2024 election season has barely begun and you already might be torn: tired of headlines about political polarization’s threat to democracy in America and abroad, but also feeling like …

Where Local People Build Local Change

2023 Book Prize Winner Michelle Wilde Anderson Says Strong Communities Need New Narratives, New Networks—And Investments in the People Who Already Live There

Four of the poorest, most maligned places in America have become beacons of hope—and burgeoning centers of trust, in people and local government—since going broke in the Great Recession. How …

The Fight to Save Stockton

In the Once-Bankrupt City, a Stanford Scholar Finds That People Are Poor Because Their Governments Are Poor

If California wants to curb poverty, its local governments must become richer.

That may be the most important lesson of the recent history of Stockton, as recounted by Stanford Law School …