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Durham Author's Book On Haiti Wins Duke-WOLA Human Rights Book Prize

The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and Duke University have named Jonathan Katz's book The Big Truck that Went by: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) as the winner of the 2013 WOLA-Duke Human Rights Book Award.

Katz will read from his book at 5 p.m. Nov. 6 at the Franklin Humanities Institute Garage at the Smith Warehouse, Bay 4. An award presentation is planned for March 2014 in Washington, DC.

Katz, who currently lives in Durham, NC, was a correspondent for the Associated Press on January 12, 2010, when the deadliest earthquake ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere struck the island nation of Haiti. The Big Truck that Went By recounts Katz personal experience when the earthquake hit, and -- drawing on his groundbreaking reporting during the period that followed -- traces the relief response that poured from the international community and where those efforts went tremendously wrong.

"The book is a crucial case study of what is wrong with current NGO process and international donor councils," said contest judge Holly Ackerman, librarian for Latin America and Iberia at Duke University Libraries. "It offers lessons on what is happening with aid/investment but, most important, it unplugs myths for the general public who sent their dollars to the Red Cross and similar organizations at the time of the quake and naturally ask, 'Why is Haiti not progressing despite so much aid?'"

The judges also listed an honorable mention for Kimberly Theidon's Intimate Enemies: Violence and Reconciliation in Peru.

Started in 2008, the WOLA-Duke Human Rights Book Award is a joint venture of Duke University and WOLA, a leading advocacy organization based in Washington, DC. The award honors the best current, non-fiction book published in English on human rights, democracy, and social justice in contemporary Latin America. The books are evaluated by a panel of expert judges drawn from academia, journalism, and public policy circles.