ACLS Fellows Named Pulitzer Prize Winner and Finalist

ACLS warmly congratulates past fellows Brian Goldstone and Bench Ansfield on being recognized by the Pulitzer Prizes for their most recent books.

There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America by Goldstone, a 2017 Luce/ACLS Fellow in Religion, Journalism & International Affairs and 2010 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellow, was awarded the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction. Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and The Remaking of the American City by Ansfield, a 2022 ACLS Fellow and 2020 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellow, was named a finalist for the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in History.

The Pulitzer Prize jury noted that There Is No Place for Us is “a feat of reportage, analysis and storytelling focusing on the issues that have created a national crisis of family homelessness among the so-called working poor.” The book was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2025 by The New York Times and The Atlantic, and was named one of President Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year. Brian Goldstone is a journalist whose longform reporting and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, The New Republic, and more. He received his PhD in anthropology from Duke University.

The jury for the Pulitzer Prize in History called Born in Flames “an elegantly written and scholarly account of large-scale arson instigated by landlords that wiped out wide swaths of apartment buildings and tenements in New York City from 1968 to the early 1980s, especially in working-class and poor neighborhoods.” Research for the book was supported by both of Ansfield’s ACLS fellowships. Previously, the book was awarded the the 2026 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Nonfiction, and Francis Parkman Prize for the Best Book in American History from the Society of American Historians. Bench Ansfield is an assistant professor of history at Temple University with a PhD in American studies from Yale University.